O. Henry Ending

Mulch Ado

How moving a compost pile
lifts a family’s spirits

By Cassie Bustamante

“Oh, you’re a fitness trainer,” my doctor said. “This’ll be easy. Just imagine you’re doing a crunch.”

After a few more core exercises, my wriggling baby boy entered the world. We spent two glorious days in the hospital with doctors and nurses guiding our every move. Babies don’t come with user’s manuals, but bookstore shelves are lined with guides, and websites are loaded with tips for navigating those first years. We got this, my husband and I conveyed through exhausted, new-parent eyes.

Sixteen years later, our eyes are a different kind of tired and the silent glances exchanged are more anxious than adoring. There are few, if any, field guides to parenting the modern sulky teen — something that explains the array of inexplicable mood shifts or identifies the meaning behind a glare or sigh. Toss the world of social media and a pandemic into the mix and not even the so-called parenting experts are experts anymore.

Last spring, we were all feeling pandemic fatigue in our house. Missing the connections that come through sports, my son was sinking into a worrying place. I wanted to toss him a rope, but I wasn’t sure I had anything strong enough. After all, I’d never lived through the experience of being a teen boy, let alone during the time of COVID.

Each morning, I’d tote my youngest male prodigy to preschool, reflecting on the unsettling silence of his older brother during the short drive, wondering what it would take to unlock the happy kid we knew was in there. Ironically, an answer to my prayer lay closer than I knew — almost at the end of our own driveway.

A mountainous mulch pile stood at the foot of our neighbor’s yard. As I passed by the house several days in a row, I noticed the mound wasn’t shrinking. Something American politician and orator Robert Ingersoll had said back in the 1800s — as true today as ever — rang in my head: “We rise by lifting others.”

I texted my neighbor: “Let me send Sawyer down to help you with that mulch. He’s had a ton of experience hauling and spreading it and knows what he’s doing.”

When he arrived home that afternoon, I cheerfully pounced. “I volunteered you to help our neighbors spread mulch!” I exclaimed. He rolled his eyes and began muttering excuses not to go. Finally, he shrugged and agreed, if only because spending time there meant not having to deal with me. Sometimes you take a win any way you can get it.

Two days later, he made his trek down the street, garden gloves in hand. Watching him go, a tightness crept over my chest and I choked up a little, knowing this was what he needed. Call it a mother’s hunch that we sometimes rise by lifting others’ mulch. Plus, it’s a scientific fact that once a mother has a child, she can no longer keep her feelings, opinions or the occasional proud tear inside.

When Sawyer returned home, red-faced and sweaty, he was wearing something I hadn’t seen in some time — the beginnings of a smile and a glimmer of pride in his eye.

I tried to play it cool even though I could barely contain my happiness.

“Well,” I casually inquired, “how did it go?”

If we don’t have plans tomorrow,” he said, “is it OK if I go back to help again?”

I told him that would be just fine with me.

The spark was back.

And so was that proud little tear.  OH

Cassie Bustamante is the digital content manager for O.Henry. Subscribe to her witty roundup of Greensboro events in our weekly newsletter, O.Hey, at oheygreensboro.com.

Love During Lockdown

How my parents maintained a steady diet of simple pleasures during COVID

By Georgianna Penn

“It’s the little things that mean a lot, just like the song,” says my mom, who, as a teenager in Gretna, Va., sang that song a dozen times on her radio show in the mid-1950s. For my parents, who have been married for more than 63 years, it has been the little things that have kept their love alive.

During COVID lockdown, I got a brief glimpse through that lens of love my parents so cherish.

My mom remembers the Alta Vista Rotary Club recommending her as a singer for the Russ Carlton Orchestra. Sax player met young jazz singer, and the rest is history.

Remember the saying, “Those who play together stay together”? Dad courted Mom by writing arrangements for her. “In My Solitude” was the first tune. And when they did not have a gig, they danced in the living room on Saturday night. “You Send Me” by Sam Cook was their favorite for non-gig date nights. “We never went to prom because we always played proms,” Mom says. Performing at places like Virginia’s Hotel Roanoke and riding home in the back of the band’s station wagon holding hands was date night for them.

On their first Valentine’s together, George gave Dixie a huge heart-shaped box of chocolates. Because of a massive snowstorm, Dad was unable to drive from Danville to Gretna in his 1941 turtle-back Mercury Coupe for weeks, so Dixie made that box of chocolates last an entire month by eating one piece a day. Fast forward 60 years, George and Dixie, who live in Madison, still eat one piece of chocolate a day — after dinner but before the TV show Suits.

Dad’s biggest accomplishment during COVID has been having his 1935 Conn Naked Lady baritone sax worked on by Greensboro’s saxophone whisperer, Evan Raines, at Moore Music. He also patched the toe hole in his New Balance sneakers during COVID. That’s a trick he learned from his dad, who patched the innertube tires on his 1936 Ford sedan during World War II when rubber was rationed.

If the sweater fits, buy eight of them. With a December birthday, four daughters and Christmas, Mom racked up turtlenecks from Chico’s. One for each day of the week and an extra one for non-gig date nights in the basement.

Watching daily rituals of meal planning or choosing what to wear for Rotary Zoom meetings have been special.

I often catch them holding hands in their matching recliners with their matching Maine Coon cats and matching Timex watches. Each year for New Year’s, they somehow manage to give each other the same gift, a Timex Indiglo watch. Mom has so many, she keeps extras as backup. During lockdown, gig night has turned into basement jazz. Mom and Dad’s most treasured gigs, however, are playing with their four daughters for the O. Henry Hotel’s Jazz Series before COVID.

Their biggest little thing, however, during this time of less-is-more, is their 3 p.m. Bake Me Happy parking lot cupcake dates in Madison, which has taken their romance full circle for sure — while, yes, holding hands. But this time, in the front seat, not the back.  OH

Madison native and Greensboro College graduate, Georgianna Penn loves sharing stories of hope and finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. Performing the music of the Great American Songbook with her family at O. Henry Hotel’s Jazz Series is what she has missed most during the pandemic.

Illustration by Harry Blair

O.Henry Ending

The Short Cut

Shorn but not forgotten

By Cynthia Adams

In the flush of youth, Don loved having  his thick hair tugged and pulled whenever watching one of his educational TV programs. As the narrator droned on about the mating habits of sloths (sloth foreplay alone could fill an entire program), I admired his mane’s manly thickness. Mr. Burgess, his barber, actually thinned it. 

Don was a regular, returning with a G.I. Joe haircut and tales of Mr. Burgess and his investments. The Burgess portfolio was a thing to marvel over when you are young and have only a full head of hair in the credit column. Then, Mr. Burgess hit 100 and closed shop. 

Don was accustomed to sitting in the company of unhurried men who let stories fall out of their mouths as clipped hair fell around their draped shoulders. He and his fine head of hair were adrift after Mr. Burgess hung up his clippers. 

The only thing to do was to patronize a walk-in shop. Don grew experimental, gradually letting his hair grow out when a persuasive female barber convinced him it was more stylish. Stylish was a new possibility! Then Don snagged an interview with a conservative firm. He purchased an interview suit, tie, shirt and wing-tips and returned to the single stylist he trusted. But she was vacationing.  

He shrugged, deciding to fly unshorn to the interview early Monday morning. As Don polished his CV, I fretted that he would look unpolished. I got to thinking. We had recently bought clippers and plunged into grooming our mutts. Admittedly, our dogs looked a bit off. Mottled skin shone through unfortunate places on their ears, rumps, tails and legs. Both had wriggled and protested throughout. 

But humans sat still.  

I eyed Don’s hair, deciding I could not allow him to go off on this job interview looking shaggy. He relented, and perched tensely on the bathroom toilet seat. 

“Just a little overall,” he cautioned, as I aimed the razor attachment on the clippers at Don’s forehead. The razor thrummed against my palm, ticklish and heavy. A two-by-two-inch swatch revealed pinkish white skin behind the razor’s trajectory. A fat swatch of black hair fell to the floor before I jerked the razor back. “Hunh!” I said, my heart galloping.  

Don’s eyebrows flew up. “What did you do?!” he shouted, rising up.  

“Sit back down,” I reproached. “You would never jump up like that if Mr. Burgess was giving you a cut.”  

Don had the beginnings of a reverse Mohawk.  

“It’s just a little short. For you.” (It was short by anyone’s standards, unless, say, you were a skinhead.)  

“How short?!”  

“A little shorter than Mr. Burgess cuts it.”  

At that, Don vaulted off the toilet seat. “Oh. My. God,” he uttered. My hand began shaking, but not from the vibrating razor. When something goes tragically wrong I am prone to laugh. He touched his scalp tentatively. “Wait, let me fix it! Something is wrong with this razor! It’s just the first base line cut,” I protested. “This thing didn’t cut that close with the dogs,” I argued— the only true thing I said that Sunday afternoon. 

Don rounded on me, snatching the razor. “You turned it the wrong way!  You turned it downward to shave and shaved a strip of hair in the very middle  of my forehead!” The gash atop his forehead now matched the spreading pink of his face. 

“But I like it,” I lied instantly. What a fantastic lie this was. 

He scowled. 

“You could wear a hat!”  

“To a job interview? Seriously?” Don was apoplectic. We discussed barber options on a late Sunday afternoon. I sprinted to find the phone book. Only one salon was open. 

Cowardly and embarrassed, I waited in the car as Don went inside. He returned unrecognizable. His fine, thick hair was now a few centimeters long. What would the interviewer think? That Don had head lice? That he was sporting gansta chic? 

So I lied again. “I love it!” I exclaimed. Don glowered.  

On Monday morning, Don wore his new suit, crisp shirt and Windsor-knotted tie as he departed for the Big Deal Interview. But he looked twenty years older with no hair. His “I’m game!” gait was off. But when he returned on Tuesday, a smile wreathed his face as he dropped his bags.  

“No big deal,” Don said. “I don’t think I’m actually a very good fit for that place.” He did not say the obvious: I had undercut him. Short cut him.  

Could I ever make this up to him? 

Fifteen years passed. Don eventually developed his father’s receding hairline in the very place where I permanently scared his follicles to death. He isn’t bald, but his hair is no longer dark nor lush. Of late, though, he has been growing it a bit. Last Sunday, I eyed him as he shaved. 

“I could even that up, just a little,” I ventured, touching his graying sideburns. 

“No,” Don flatly replied. 

“Just with scissors,” I added. 

“Noooooooooooo. Nope. Never.” Don repeated.  

“Well, that was an unfortunate thing about the razor,” I mumbled; a final, stupefying lie.  

“You know,” Don added, kindly searching my face, “I was wrong for that job. I wouldn’t have liked it.”  

But we both understood, standing inside the sweet silence filling the bathroom, that sometimes half-truths are the only way to Super Glue a relationship back to the sticking place.  

And we smiled.

O.Henry Ending

A World Without Hugs

I’ve been waiting for this my whole life

By David Claude Bailey

I know. I know. Everybody misses hugs, getting them and giving them.

But I don’t. Not one bit. For me, one of the few silver linings of the Great Pandemic is not getting all hot and bothered about spreading a cloud of cooties, dandruff, body odors and cat hairs with someone I really don’t care to know intimately.

Those who are still reading are surely wondering what trauma from my youth turned me into an utterly unhuggable misanthrope.

My mother hugged me lovingly, and I reciprocated. But I would also let her grab my ear and give it a good scrub with a washrag. My daddy’s family weren’t much into hugging, but dad hugged me as a kid. That said, I could tell he was relieved when I began shaking hands with him, when, for instance, I’d go off to Scout camp for a week.

So maybe that’s where it came from.

It might very well have been my mother’s bottle-blonde bridge partner, who would press my face into her ample bosom, where I was convinced I would surely smother to death on the combination of baby powder and Chanel No. 5, 6, 7 and 8. Another bridge player would scoop me up for a big, slobbery, red-smear of a lipstick kiss, giving me the full effect of her last cigarette and the chemical aura surrounding her freshly permed hair. No wonder I ran from her.

I married a hugger from a hugging family and when I’m having a terrible day, few things are more restorative than a hug from Anne. My children are huggers and as they cast off into the great unknown for months at a time, a warm and heartfelt hug says much more than a teary goodbye. To me, hugs should be something of a sacred connection between two people. My body is yours, I say to my daughters and my wife. I would give my life to save yours, and here’s our bond.

I assure you I never felt that way toward my great and ample aunt Gus or my willowy uncle Reid.

Men hugs are tricky. Some friends give a manly, chest-to-chest, arm-over-the-shoulder squeeze. With others, it’s just a quick shoulder-to-shoulder bump. I have a friend, though, who savors hugs. And he is eminently huggable, Teddy-bear-like in bearing and girth and completely unselfconscious. Many a woman delights in hugging the daylights out of him. And there I am, giving a triangular, shoulder-contact-only, ersatz hug and wondering what’s wrong with me.

Funerals and weddings are the worst. But who needs a hug more than someone whose daddy just croaked? Or whose daughter just got married? Nieces of a certain age are also awkward. What to do about the niece who hugged you like a bear just a year ago but has since matured? And nephews? Even the subteens get handshakes from me — and seem actually grateful.

Believe me, people can sense us unhuggables; it’s amazing how they develop memories for the types of hugs that are wanted or unwanted.

I envy people who never give this sort of thing a second thought. And I sure wish I didn’t. But I do. And I know others who feel the same way. Once this COVID thing is over and done with, do we really want to go back to sharing our germs, dandruff and garlic breath? Can’t we just get along with elbow bumps?  OH

Hug David Claude Bailey, O.Henry’s intimacy-skills columnist, remotely at davidclaudebailey@gmail.com.

O.Henry Ending

Don’t Forget to Write

For our family, the mailman was more than just a welcome sight — he was a lifeline

By Ruth Moose

As a child during World War II, I lived with my grandparents on a farm near Cottonville in Stanly County, North Carolina. With gas rationing, there was no traffic and so quiet we could hear the mailman long before we could see the cloud of dust his car made on the unpaved road. In a world turned upside down and torn apart, mail was the only thing we could count on.

We lived for the mail. It meant the world to us. We had the radio and a weekly newspaper, also delivered by the mailman. But letters told us the people we loved were safe.  At least for the time being.  My grandparents’ four children were in four corners of the world: my father stationed in France; my Uncle Tom a navigator with the Army Air Corps in London; my Aunt Pearl, an Army nurse, was with MacArthur’s troops in the Philippines; and my Uncle Edgar, who had just graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a masters in physics was in Washington, D.C., and alternately, Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Each of them wrote a letter home every week. You could depend on it.  And my grandparents wrote back.

When two weeks went by without a letter from her daughter, my grandmother was more than worried, fearing the worst. She sent inquiries. Discovered my aunt was in this country, hospitalized with a mental and physical breakdown. But she was alive and recovered.

The mail not only brought letters each week but also a brand new, fresh copy of my grandmother’s favorite reading, The Saturday Evening Post. That was her recreation, her relaxation, her reward at the end of each long, worried day. On special occasions the mailman might bring a box of Whitman’s Sampler, picked up from a PX somewhere I’m sure. We rationed a single chocolate a day as long as it lasted.

The mailman also brought books! My aunt in D.C. was a librarian and regularly mailed me books, books that were read aloud to me until I taught myself to read. Poems from A Child’s Garden of Verses, The Adventures of Peter Rabbit and others. Books were magic doors to a larger world and gave me a lifelong love of the printed word, of learning, of no greater pleasure than reading.

When the war was over, they all came home, wounded in body, mind and spirit, but thankfully alive. They continued the weekly letters home and to each other the rest of their lives.

After my grandfather died, the farm was sold and my grandmother lived three months at a time with her four children: my aunt a school nurse in New Jersey; my uncle on the faculty at N.C. State in Raleigh; Uncle Edgar teaching at Georgia State; and my family in Albemarle. Always letters back and forth, specialty cards for all the occasions. Cards to be kept and displayed on mantels and dressers. Cards to be re-enjoyed for days and weeks following. Not the same as today’s emails, a blink here and gone forever. I remember getting an e-condolence card after my husband’s death and crying in frustration. If the sender really wanted to send some sympathy, they could have bought a card, or written a note, signed, addressed, stamped and mailed it. An e-condolence was a quick click and no more thought than that. Obligation over.

Sadly none of the old letters survived. Tossed in the purging of estates after a death; nieces, nephews, cousins, grandchildren who saw them as only pieces of paper, not family history.

During the pandemic, I’ve being purging files, boxes from storage and attics. Deep in one box I was amazed to find my letters to my husband, who was then my boyfriend during our four college years. He had somehow, somewhere, kept them and they had survived many moves, packing and unpacking. Don’t tell me emails could do that. Not in a million years. Yellowed and with three-cent stamps, the letters tell the story of a summer romance that lasted over 50 years. I’ve been reading, alternately laughing and crying. We were so young.  So 1950s crazy and scared. The question is: Will my sons want these letters? My grandchildren? I can only hope.  OH

Ruth Moose taught Introduction to Writing Short Fiction at UNC-Chapel Hill for 15 years. Her students have since published New York Times Bestsellers and are getting Netflixed. She recently returned to her roots in the Uwharrie Mountains. 

O.Henry Ending

Half-Hearted

Pounding the pavement leaves one writer in a Tiff

By Cynthia Adams

The Southside Running Club was ready for my resistance. Especially, the de facto leader of the pack, Beth Deloria.

Beth does marathons just for the swag and the snacks.

“Just try a half,” she encouraged me.

She convinced me to join runs . . . runs that concluded at Manny’s Universal Cafe with hot coffee and convo.

Most of the club members loved running. Not me. I got deeply in touch with my inner bitch. That ran nonstop: My ACL was probably tearing. My stomach roiled.

Grumpy. Sleepy. Hungry. Thirsty. I was multiple personalities running from running: The Seven Dwarfs of Excuses.

“Too cold to train for a half,” I protested as Deloria’s face curved into a grin. “Easier than heat,” she replied. “Too hilly,” I countered.

As fellow runners collected medals from marathons, I shuffled along. I developed runner’s Tourette, earning the moniker “Cussin’ Cindy.”

Then, Nike announced a virtual Women’s Only half-marathon coinciding with the original one in San Francisco (where tuxedoed firemen drape a Tiffany’s necklace over the neck of each finisher!).

If ever I was going to run a half, this was it! I could design my own (flat) course at my own pace! And, there was the promise of Tiffany swag, which would be mailed after uploading my qualifying miles from a Nike device.

Carefully I mapped the flattest possible 13.1 miles to be found.

Beth asked a lot of nosy questions: Where was I starting? And ending? I resented this. My miles were on my terms.

At 5 a.m. on the appointed date, she showed up at my door with Jim Austin in tow. The two were lugging a starting gate they had built. Another Southsider, Joy Savage, showed up to run part of the course with me.

No escape.

Along my route, signs appeared: “Sweat is just pain leaving the body” . . . and more.

At mile No. 6, more Southsiders appeared, including Emily, a Triad weather gal. She kindly forecasted I would make it. Cindy, Heath, Buck, Carolyn, Billy and a pal nicknamed Skittles joined in.

At mile 13, Beth and Jim stood near the Latham Park tennis courts, the starting gate reversed to “FINISH.” A grinning Jim began running backwards with it as I approached.

Tourette syndrome erupted.

As we filed into Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee, they produced an improvised medal, a “13.1” decal and flowers.

Weeks later the Nike package arrived. It contained a “finisher” shirt and a Tiffany box. Our dog was nearly as excited as I was.

I ripped the box open and out fell a flimsy metal key ring. If I squinted, I could see “Tiffany & Co.” inscribed on it. My dog raised his ears as I used an s-word that rhymes with “duck” to express my disappointment. The box, I decided, was a lot nicer than the key ring. The dog agreed, grabbing it, running faster than I ever had for the dog door.

“Tasteful,” he seemed to growl, his mouth filled with Tiffany blue cardboard.

In a few months, a new blue box would appear at Manny’s just after a run that had ended there. Beth and Jim watched as I opened it.

“Not sucky,” was engraved on the gleaming silver, bona fide Tiffany key ring. And just like that, a lot of pain did, in fact, leave the body! OH

Cynthia Adams is a contributing editor to O.Henry. She still cusses while running.

O.Henry Ending

A Manner of Speaking

For this Southerner, it’s drawl or nothin’

By David Claude Bailey

If you’ve met me, you will agree that one of my most unforgettable traits is my down-home Piedmont accent. Think Andy Griffith or a North Carolina Highway Patrolman asking you if you had a particularly pressing reason for exceeding the speed limit.

In my youth, I never gave it much thought — until, I went to New York City at 16 and ordered a burger. The waitress stopped me in mid-sentence and said, “Say that again.” When I did, she broke into uncontrollable laughter and parroted my words with a lame Gomer Pyle impersonation.

Granted, I tend to draw out my vowels. I pronounce the sauce (dip) that’s used to mop pork barbecue “Di-yup.” When I say “hog” or “dog,” they sound as if I fattened them up with a few extra syllables.

I don’t need to be telling “you all” this if you’ve lived in Greensboro or its surrounds for any length of time. And yet, decades ago when I enrolled at UNCG, 20 miles from my hometown of Reidsville, people thought I talked funny, just my cousins from Madison and Mayodan talked funny. And my wife-to-be, bless her, got an earful when she moved to Reidsville from the Lowcountry of South Carolina. My schoolmates had a field day with the way she said “Sears” (rhymes with “mayors”). Sadly, she lost any trace of a rich and glorious accent that I only get to hear when we visit her relatives.

Let’s face it, everybody talks funny compared to someone else, but if you have a Southern accent, somebody’s going to point it out.

A press trip to Malaysia with a group of American cookbook writers comes to mind. Two or three of us who had become fast friends would get up early and seek out farmers’ markets, gawking at the unusual viands, such as frogs, bats and sea creatures I’d only seen before in storybooks. Afterwards, we’d drink cup after cup of coffee that had been made in what looked like a sock, thickened with an inordinate amount of sweetened condensed milk. In spite of these shared bonds, one in the troupe still thought it hilariously amusing to affect a Hee-Haw drawl, once chortling out, “Why right’ cheer comes Day-fid Bay-leee.”

I simply asked her: “If I were Polish, would you start telling ‘dumb Polack’ jokes? Or if I were Hispanic or Black, would you suddenly start talking like the Frito Bandito or Buckwheat?” She actually apologized.

On other occasions, I’ve discovered my speech has its advantages. When I was a young college kid hitchhiking through Europe, a group of Italians in a bar thought I sounded just like Bob Dylan and bought me rounds of beer as long as I crooned on about Ruthie wanting me to come see her in her honky-tonk lagoon. And a female publicist in London once kept me on the phone, asking me about what kind of car I drove and was I married. Finally, she said, “Has anyone ever told you that you have a really sexy accent?”

Sexy? Er, no. Though a waitress in Philadelphia once sat down at my table to spoon feed me the crème brûlée I’d ordered because, she said, she liked the way I talked. I’m pretty sure that’s not all she liked.

Over the years, I’ve come to actually treasure my Southern accent. What continues to bother me, though, is that with the influx of so many people from all over the United States into the Piedmont, I still hear, “say that again.”

“Hey,” I think as they laugh hysterically, “I was here first.” Which brings me, of course, to another story.

In the early 1980s I was aerospace editor of Cocoa TODAY, which became Florida TODAY, which was a trial run for Al Neuharth’s USA TODAY. I covered NASA for the paper in the months before the Space Shuttle became America’s first manned flight in six years. I had just been Okayed for a trip to Washington, D.C., to write a series about the Shuttle’s cost overruns, a series that eventually won the Aviation and Space Writers’ top award. As I jabbered on and on about the trip with my colleagues, a Brooklyn-born photographer mimicked my pronunciation of our nation’s capital — “Warshington,” I was saying.

“Bev,” I said, “where are we?” She looked puzzled, but replied, “In the newsroom.”

“Where’s the newsroom?” I continued. “In Cocoa.” “Where’s Cocoa,” I countered. “In Florida,” she said, and then suspiciously, “What is this?” “Just answer my question, please,” and by this time the entire newsroom was tuned in.

“What region of the country is Florida in?”

“It’s in the South, I guess,” she replied.

“No guessing about it,” I shot back. “Florida is in the Deep South, so quit telling me how to talk on my own turf.”

Never has the sound of applause been so sweet.  OH

David Claude Bailey did not pick up any of his mother’s Pennsylvania Dutch accent.

O.Henry Ending

Wag More, Bark Less

Happiness is a dog named Fritz

By Brian Faulkner

Illustration by Harry Blair

My next door neighbor has a dog down the street. It’s not his dog, but the pup hasn’t figured that out. So, every time my friend approaches the house where the little guy lives, the thing starts to bark and shimmy and shake until Gordon gets there and scratches the dog’s neck. It’s quite the sight, all that love, which makes me think that maybe Charles Schulz was right about happiness being a warm puppy.

“Why not get yourself a dog like that?” I quiz my neighbor. “No need,” he says. “Fritz and I are happy with things the way they are.”

This isn’t an essay about dogs, although it does seem to be drifting that way — I could tell you about one dog I met who had been taught to smile on command or another who could back up on request, both to great merriment. So it may be that dogs and happiness come from the same place. The light in my youngest brother’s eyes when I brought a puppy home in a box one summer’s day in 1965 could almost make me think so.

We can do things that might lead to happiness, but there’s no guarantee that happiness will appear. But then, just when we finally think we’ve got a grip on it, happiness, slides away and hides out in life’s tall grass until it’s ready to show up again.

“Happiness ain’t a thing in itself,” declares a Mark Twain character who’s trying to figure what heaven might be like. “It’s only a contrast with something that ain’t pleasant.”

“It just seems that if you hang on for a while longer, there is always something bright right around the corner,” observed Schulz, who strung both happiness and heartache through his comic strips like multicolored ribbons. You may remember Charlie Brown each autumn, ready to kick the football Lucy is holding upright for him, eager to let fly with it but knowing that she probably will snatch the ball away just as he gets there. We know what’s going to happen, but in our story — the one in our hearts, Lucy holds fast and Charlie Brown sends the ball sailing. We’re all Charlie Browns, and disappointments thread their way through our lives like insistent melodies. The trick lies in learning to let whatever happiness may come our way just happen.

I enjoy poking around in vintage stores like The Red Collection, where from time to time I’m delighted to find old pictures with a bit of happiness still clinging to them, memories long separated from their people. One of the happiest pictures I’ve ever seen — anywhere — was shot by Matthew Lewis Jr., a Pulitzer-winning news photographer known mostly for his civil rights era work: two little girls swinging together — one black child, one white, soaring through the sky and having the time of their young lives. Anybody who claims that “happiness ain’t what it’s cracked up to be” should see that picture.

Sometimes happiness simply surprises, like the time I covered a news story for a radio station. A rather robust lady had fallen through her outhouse seat into the mire below. It took a winch to crank her out, and as her considerable bulk emerged from the darkness, she showered her audience with laughter. What a joy! It’s refreshing to see people happy despite their circumstance, people who know they are blessed and who bless us in return. It could be someone working in their garden and holding up a handful of fresh-pulled weeds in a wave as you pass by. Or Fritz, waiting up the road for my neighbor to come scratch his neck.

Despite scientific research that says happiness ain’t so hot because happy people are more likely to be “influenced by stereotypes” and have other discouraging traits, I for one am all for it — happiness, that is. My suggestion is to take the risk that things won’t turn out perfectly, jump on the happiness train and let it take you down the tracks. Let your spirits rise. Float off in the air, like a balloon that’s escaped from a child’s birthday party, exulting in the moment with no worry about where the wind may take you . . . if anywhere. Breathe in the fresh, breathe out the foul. Divest yourself of the things that gnaw at you, that bring you down, if just for a moment.

Then, as Mark Twain puts it, in no time at all you’ll be “happy as a dog with two tails.” OH

Brian Faulkner says he’s happiest when writing, which he’s done more or less successfully all his life, including a series of Emmy award–winning public television programs, the occasional essay and a children’s story now and then. He lives in Lewisville, which he claims is close enough for Greensboro to claim as kin. 

O.Henry Ending

Mama’s Cookin’

Sweet memories of the most creative home chef who ever lived

By David C. Bailey

I was 16 by the time I appreciated what an incredible cook my mother was — thanks to the woman who would become my own personal chef.

“Duck sandwiches?” Anne responded incredulously when I told her what we were having for our picnic lunch, which also happened to be our first date.

“Yeah, and deviled eggs with watermelon-rind pickles and Mom’s chocolate chess pie for dessert,” I went on. In truth, I worried the repast might be a bit scant. Mom often fried chicken for picnics and packed her signature country ham biscuits, plus, if you were really lucky, homemade pimiento cheese sandwiches. Not to worry. My mother’s sister, Rachel, had also packed a picnic for our double-date, my cousin Bill and his girlfriend, Mary. She’d rustled up some of her tangy sweet-and-sour German potato salad laced with smoked side meat. Like Mom, Rachel blended lessons learned from her Pennsylvania Dutch upbringing with what she knew we Southerners loved. Add some of her simple but simply delicious sugar cookies, and our picnic made a pretty decent feed. (And yet, I remember the sweetest treat of all was that kiss I stole underneath the cotton blanket we tented over our heads against the rain.)

I now realize that my mother — and excuse me for expressing what may be a painful truth to you — was a way better cook than anyone else’s.

Look back on your own youth. Did your mom ever cook you duck à l’orange or Indian curry served with homemade chutney? OK, so maybe she did, but was she also able to Southern-fry chicken so crisp that it was a shame to smother it in milk gravy? And did your mom also wrap quail in bacon and stuff them with chestnuts and mushrooms? Was every single meal she served accompanied by some form of hot bread, plus a homemade dessert? Did you — and do you still — regularly dream about your mom’s cooking?

Other cooks may shine at the holidays — and Mother’s sweet potatoes with black walnuts, her shoo-fly pie and her whole baked country ham or goose were by no means shabby. But what my mother excelled at was cooking every dish day-after-day with the utmost creativity and care. Greek meatloaf she’d seen in a magazine. Deep-fat-fried zucchini or okra. Exotic specialties like borscht that she’d plucked from her beloved 12-volume Woman’s Day Encyclopedia (A set I still cherish and use frequently).

As my wife once remarked with amazement after experiencing a typical fresh-from-the-garden summer lunch of freshly picked corn on the cob, green beans tangled with bacon, fresh sliced tomatoes, cracklin’ cornbread, plus some leftover pork chops, “Every meal at your house is an event.”

My parents were foodies way before that word had any currency. My cousins would come and peer in wonder into our cupboard containing olives, pâté, anchovies, capers, four or five types of mustard, even caviar on occasion. Dad was a Belk store manager who traveled to New York City regularly and brought home shopping bags of pastrami, pickles and smoked fish, along with epic tales of lobster dinners and elaborate, multicourse Chinese feasts, which Mom would replicate, like his favorite, angels-on-horseback (oysters wrapped with bacon and broiled with onions and hoisin sauce). She fully embraced the ’50s hot trend of cooking what was then termed international or gourmet food, but she never abandoned the comfort food she — and Daddy — grew up eating on the farms they were raised on during the Depression — chicken-fried steak, sauerbraten, buckwheat cakes, chicken and dumplings, cider-braised rabbit and apples, all served with a heaping helping of their tradition, passed on from her mother and grandmother.

But her real creativity came into play with leftovers. As she would be piling bowls from the fridge onto the counter, my sister would say, “Uh oh, time for must-go soup.” Quoting my grandmother, Mom would counter,  “Better bad belly burst than good food waste.” Roast beef hash. Spicy gumbo from leftover okra and other vegetables. Stuffed baked potatoes or green peppers. And her pièce de résistance: schnitz un knepp from leftover ham paired with apples and dumplings.

Mom was not a demonstrative person. She wasn’t huggy, and even her filial kisses might be termed polite and correct. She said, “I love you” to each of us regularly, but with just a tad of awkwardness. This despite the fact that she was a hopeless romantic who gobbled up Hemingway, Fitzgerald and massive Russian novels one after another.

Dad would finish his favorite dessert, mopping up one of Mom’s fluffy biscuits in a slurry of molasses, give a satisfied groan, push his chair away from the table and say, “Aren’t we glad we married her,” maybe the most affectionate thing I ever heard him say to Mom.

“Nothing says lovin’ like something from the oven,” the Pillsbury Doughboy used to say, and Mom’s cooking said it best. OH

O.Henry’s Contributing Editor David Claude Bailey learned to cook late in life at Print Works Bistro after working his way up from dishwasher to backline chef: cueconfessions.wordpress.com/2009/04/

O. Henry Ending

Stitches in Time

A mother’s miracles with needle and thread

By Kate Goodrich

When I was very small, my mother worked small miracles in cloth and wool. Tiny clothes, too small for me, she fashioned for my doll. The very sweetest, my favorite by far, was a pale yellow sweater, with each of its little pearly buttons in the shape of a bunny. These treasures just appeared: I never saw the knitting and purling, the cutting and stitching, the post-bedtime hours and all the love that went into creations such as that lump of yellow wool no bigger than her hand.

Much later, I tried my own hand at knitting under her guidance. But my “scarf” came to a desultory halt at 6 inches in length, the needles jammed into immobility by the intensity of my efforts. I never took up needles again but marveled as off the ends of hers spun such intricate patterns as the curved heel of an argyle sock.

No project was too small — or too large — for this seamstress extraordinaire. She did not hesitate to tackle reupholstering a couch or fashioning a set of lined floor-to-ceiling drapes for our dining room. To most every piece of clothing she made for us, she set her unique signature — a creative trim or appliqué or fringe plucked out by deft hands.

But there is one creation of hers, indelible in my memory, that also carries a great burden of guilt. On a Saturday expedition to an old fabric emporium in a run-down section of Philadelphia — where normally we would never have ventured without my father — my mother patiently endured my rejection of one bolt of cloth after another as she roamed the store’s dusty, claustrophobic aisles hoping that her next suggestion would prove to be The One. The ivory brocade we finally selected was so lovely that I almost wished I were getting married instead of merely singing in the high school chorale affair.

Having resurrected five yards of the stuff from its dusty sepulchre, my mother proceeded to construct a wonder that Cinderella’s fairy godmother would have envied: The shimmering ivory brocade was slowly transformed into a floor-length sleeveless gown with a wide, rose-colored moiré sash. My pleasure and anticipation grew each time I stood for another fitting and stroked the gown’s folds, feeling like that glass-shod princess. And like the fairytale heroine, I wore my lovely dress only once. It grieves me to say that a case of nerves during the evening’s big performance caused me to sweat profusely. The dress was stained beyond repair.

I didn’t know then that, over a lifetime, “favorite” clothes flow in and out of a woman’s closet like money in the bank: I figured this would be my favorite dress forever. I thought only with guilt and deep regret of the dozens of hours and zillions of stitches my mother had invested to make — what? Make a dress? Not really.

Like the new drapes and the transformed couch — and the yellow sweater with bunny buttons — the dress, as an object of beauty, was ephemeral. But as an act of love, it is permanent. For my mother’s only desire was to make her eldest daughter happy and, for one special evening at least, to feel very beautiful and grown up.

So, thanks Mom. I haven’t forgotten. Never will.  OH

After living and working in Boston for more than 40 years, Kate Goodrich retired to Wilmington in 2013 to be near the beach, where she can be found most seasons in a chair engrossed in a good book.