Daddy used bolt cutters to cut the chain on a livestock gate. We rode in the bed of his truck, speeding across a bumpy field.

In the pickup-bed: Daddy’s friends Willie, Stuart, and me.

“This is a bad idea,” said Willie, trying not to choke on his cigarette. “Old man Luke’s liable to shoot us for stealing.”

The truck came to a stop. It was night. We could see our breath. We looked across acres of pine trees which grew in a field of weeds.

Daddy aimed headlights at trees. In a few minutes, chainsaws screamed, men laughed. They shaped balsam firs with trimmers, and cut down nearly forty-five.

They stacked them on a flatbed in a hurry.

The next night, Daddy and I sat in the front seat, wearing Santa caps, heater blaring. Bing Crosby never sounded so good.

He handed me a clipboard. “You’re Santa’s Little Navigator tonight.” he said. “Read me them addresses.”

I read, pointing a flashlight at a roadmap. And we delivered balsam firs to every dilapidated home, ratty apartment, rusty camper, and aluminum single-wide in

the county.

We were greeted at front doors by men in work boots, women in waitress uniforms, and their giddy children. Daddy would set trees in dens, and give them free smiles.

Most people thanked him until they wore out their voices. Some cried.

Daddy would say, “Don’t thank me, thank the church.”

But the church had nothing to do with it—not officially.

The following Sunday at church, Daddy was a door-greeter. I stood beside him, shaking hands, passing bulletins.

With each handshake, Daddy said, “Care to donate to needy kids who can’t afford trees?”

People handed over bills. Tens, twenties, even a few hundreds.

After service, Daddy drove a maze of dirt roads while the sun lowered over the world. We stopped at a faded house in an overgrown field. Daddy rapped on the door.

An old man…

He’s single father. A widower, to be exact. But that’s not the story here.

He waits tables for a living. And on his off-days, he works at another restaurant.

Sometimes, he works with his brother’s power-washing business for extra cash. He does handyman work, and installs home sound systems. He is a busy man.

He does it for his kids.

The money goes out the window as fast as it comes. And he’s away a lot.

His children are used to fending for themselves. They’re used to preparing their own suppers, watching television alone, and tucking themselves in.

But not since she started coming around.

Let me back up.

Nine months ago, he met her. She’s a receptionist at a doctor’s office. She was at his restaurant for her coworker’s birthday party.

He saw her and couldn’t stop looking at her.

By the end of the night, his friends in the kitchen knew he was smitten. They teased him. “Go talk to her,” they said, shoving him.

But, confidence doesn’t exactly grow on trees, and our Lone Ranger has been out of the saddle since high school.

He didn’t

know how to approach her. He was—according to his coworkers—a big, fat, hairy chicken. So, without his permission, one of the waitresses spoke for him.

“See that guy over there?” the waitress whispered into the receptionist’s ear. “He’s the best guy you’ll ever meet. He likes you, but he’s too scaredy-cat to talk to you.”

Ouch, Kemosabe.

But that’s how it started.

A little bout her: she was married once. The doctor told her she couldn’t have kids. It broke her heart, all she’s ever wanted were children.

She likes long walks on the beach, Mexican food, Trisha Yearwood albums, chocolate ice cream, and any book that wasn’t written by Danielle Steel.

They went on a first date. It lasted for sixteen hours. But they darkened no bedrooms, rustled no sheets.…

It’s a little early for a Christmas party. But who’s counting. We’re in my sister’s backyard. There are twinkling lights hanging over a fenced area. The whole family is here.

My sister’s neighbor is performing minor surgery on his Harley. It’s loud.

My mother is drinking a beer. I am, too. We are humble, working-class people. If we’re going to have a Christmas party with loud Harleys, by God, we might as well have cheap beer, too.

There is a kid running around. A girl. She is my alleged niece.

She calls me “Uncle Sean.”

My sister talks to the girl in a high-pitched voice. “Tell your Uncle Sean you love him.”

The kid remarks, “UNKO SUH WIGBSKGH SWERW
RRRRRRR HJSKDJFH.”

Close enough.

Now the kid is on my lap. Her diaper is wet, she has green snot running from her nose, and she smells like a pot of collards.

I could just eat her all up.

She looks like her mother did at this age. She has the same eyes. Same personality. It’s a get-your-hands-off-me-I-can-do-it-myself-thank-you-very-much personality.

And I’m going back in time. Decades back.

If I close my eyes, I see my baby

sister on her rump in a big hayfield. She’s five. She’s got a dog with her. An outdoor dog, with ticks and fleas.

She’s staring into space. It’s cold. She’s got yellow snot on her upper lip.

“Is Daddy really dead?” she says.

Her face is big. Her cheeks are clammy. My father’s untimely end is fresh on her mind.

“You’re gonna catch a cold,” I say. “Let’s go inside.”

“Why would Daddy kill his own self?”

“You’re gonna get fleas if you—”

“What if YOU die next? What if MAMA dies?”

And the tears come. They’re hot tears. I remember this because they were all over my chest and shoulder.

“Nobody’s gonna die,” I tell her.

“I’m scared. What’s gonna happen to us?”

“I…

The parking lot at Target. He has no legs below the knees. His upper body is well-developed. He has a large handlebar mustache. Tattoos.

A young girl helps him out of a truck. She is eighteen at the most. Maybe nineteen.

She lifts him from the driver’s seat into a wheelchair. She is a tall girl, strapping, broad shoulders. Jeans and boots.

I can see them across the parking lot.

And even though it’s none of my business, I offer to help the girl. She too busy holding him in her arms to answer.

So he answers for her. “Thanks, boss, but my daughter’s got it. She does it all the time.”

He’s not fooling. She is stronger than a new box of Borax.

I watch her place him into his wheelchair, then buckle him in. He kisses her cheek. And away they roll into Target.

I see them in the store, too. He wheels through the aisles, laughing with the girl. There’s a look fathers give daughters. And there's a look daughters give fathers. I can spot a daddy’s-girl ten miles away.

They must be Christmas shopping

because every few words, he says, “You think Mama will like that one?”

They are in the technology section. He’s parked before a TV that’s large enough to require a movie ticket to look at. She’s standing beside him. She towers over him by at least three feet.

The screen plays “It’s a Wonderful Life.”

And I love this movie.

In fact, I’ve seen it so many times I could quote the dialogue with my hands tied behind my back and eyes closed—hanging upside down. Backwards. In the dark.

In Español.

The scene they’re watching:

George Bailey is a boy, working the soda counter in the drugstore. Young Mary is at the bar.

Mary leans forward to say to George, “Is THIS the ear you can’t hear on?”

George doesn’t answer.

So…

There she is. Yeah, it’s definitely her.

I haven’t seen her in years. She’s standing in the produce aisle of the supermarket, scooping mixed walnuts and pecans into a bag.

Nat King Cole Christmas music plays overhead. It smells like Santa Claus’ aftershave in this grocery store.

She couldn’t possibly remember me. I was the quiet man in the rear of her speech class. I was one of her adult community-college students who lurked in the back rows.

Like most in her class, I was petrified of public speaking. So were my peers.

My first speech was one I’d like to forget. I delivered a torturous five-minute monologue on the proper way to prepare Pop Tarts.

When I finished, she gave a smile that seemed to say, “I hate my life.”

I was an adult male with two jobs, a wife, and a back surgery. I tried my best in her class. And she rewarded me for it.

I’ll never forget her for that.

My classmate, Gary, was a lot like me. He worked menial jobs, he had daughters, bills. We complained

in the breezeway before classes together.

Gary had a stutter—a crippling condition that embarrassed him. Simple conversation was difficult, sometimes almost impossible. Finishing a sentence could take ten minutes.

And when she paired students for final projects, she placed us together.

We worked on our speeches one evening at a sports bar. We set up shop in a booth on a Saturday night and watched the Alabama-Georgia game while scribbling speech notes on paper.

Gary purposed we make our speeches on the crisis facing modern paternity in a national economic holocaust.

“Yawn,” said I. “Let’s speak about baseball, America’s greatest pastime, or stock-car racing, or the ever-elusive, yet highly-documented and indisputably-real Bigfoot.”

We finally agreed on writing about our parents. I don’t remember much else that night, except that our notebooks had beer-stains.

And: Alabama lost to Georgia,…

His mother died when he was six. His childhood was a lonely one. He’d been raised by his father—a man who worked too much.

No brothers. No sisters. He was a quiet child. So quiet, kids at school wondered if he even existed.

He got older and became a quiet fourteen-year-old. He had a hard time making friends. Most nights you could find him alone at home after school, eating fast food before a glowing TV screen.

She was his neighbor. She was old and feeble, with an oxygen machine. She lived in an ancient home and she stayed inside it.

She was not friendly. In fact, she was downright hateful. Most people avoided her. Especially kids. She would chew up children and spit them out.

She spent her days stuck in an easy chair, staring at windows, watching people walk the sidewalk.

One day, she and the boy started to talk.

She was on her back porch, with her nurse when she saw him pass her.

"Get up here,” she said to him, puffing a cigarette.

“Introduce yourself to me.”

And, even though nobody saw it coming, their friendship blossomed. He opened like a camellia. He talked to her about everything. He spoke about life, about day-to-day things, and what he'd seen in the news.

They became fast friends. They stayed that way through the years.

Her lawn was overgrown; he’d cut it. The siding on her home was rotting; he’d repair it. She taught him to love books. He taught her to be nice.

By his early twenties, he was helping care for her. He called to check on her often. He grocery shopped. He brought in the mail. He carried her to appointments.

And each year for Christmas, he bought her a balsam fir. A live one. He’d place it in her living room, front and center, decorated.

Her face would grow fifty-years younger when she saw…

Alabama, 1963—it was chilly. It was gray. A skinny Christmas tree sat in the corner of his rundown home, undecorated. No gifts.

His wife was a secretary. He punched a clock, wore leather gloves, and moved steel for a living.

Theirs wasn’t a particularly unusual story. They worked from can to can’t. They sweat for dimes. They ate beans, rice, and white bread.

They had seven kids. Money was hard to hold on to with seven hungry tummies.

And, on the day she found him home from work early, sitting on the steps, she knew things were about to get worse.

His face was red and puffy. He couldn’t find the words. They’d fired him. His supervisor had delivered the news without warning.

His wife held him like a child.

“What're we gonna do?” he said.

“We're gonna believe,” she told him.

But he worried until he lost sleep. Then he worried harder.

The next day, he drove a dilapidated Ford through busy streets with the classifieds beneath his arm. His eldest son rode shotgun.

The boy watched through the windows while his father begged

foremen for grunt work.

“Daddy,” said his son. “We gonna starve?”

“No, son,” he said. “But we might lose a little weight.”

After three weeks of job hunting he had, in fact, lost weight. They say he wouldn't eat suppers.

The once strong steelman; an unemployed shell, skipping lunches and dinners to save money. Rejection takes a toll.

Christmas morning.

He woke to a tree with a family seated around it. There were newspaper-wrapped packages beneath the branches. Each gift had the word, “Dad” written on it.

His eldest made a picture book from construction paper and cardboard.

His daughter had given him a cigar.

His youngest gave him five quarters which he’d saved in a piggy bank.

A black-and-white family photo—colored with crayons. A sock-monkey doll, stuffed with newsprint. An aluminum ring. Shoelace bracelets.…

I’m trying to sleep with a dog. But it’s not happening. We are in a tiny camper. It’s almost midnight, I'm awake. Ellie Mae, the coonhound, is snoring like a retired chainsaw.

Earlier today, I tried to fish with this irksome dog. We were supposed to be catching trout, but you can't fish when you have a coonhound dog-paddling through ice-cold water. When she finished, she smelled like reclaimed sushi.

And now we’re sleeping in the same single bed.

She started the night at my feet. Midway through, she curled between my legs. By morning, I will have black-and-tan hindparts in my face.

This morning, we went for a walk through the woods to do her necessaries. But she wasn’t in the mood to do business. She saw a squirrel dart across our trail. She was gone for a few hours.

She loves squirrels, even though she’s never successfully captured one. The closest she ever came to such was when she chased my neighbor’s overweight housecat through the neighborhood. She ran the cat straight onto Mister Donaldson’s roof.

Mrs. Donaldson told me that Ellie howled for a solid twenty minutes at that cat. It took three middle-aged men and a two-story telescopic ladder to rescue the poor feline.

Ever since the incident, the Donaldsons quit sending me Christmas cards. And when I see them in the supermarket they don't make eye-contact.

This dog is going to be the death of me.

For supper tonight, Ellie rode shotgun while we drove into town. Every dog I’ve ever owned has ridden shotgun. Cody, Lady, Boone, Joe. God rest their souls.

There’s something about a dog in my passenger seat that does it for me.

Our main order of business for the evening was supper. I planned on picking up something to-go, and eating back at the camper.

I parked in town, and instructed Ellie to wait in the bed of the truck…

Dear God,

It's me again. Actually, I don’t know what you want me to call you. For all I know, you might prefer to be called something Hebrew, Latin, German, or Cherokee. Anyway, one thing’s for sure: you’re older than the names people call you. That much I remember from Sunday school.

My mother called you, “The Lord.” My granny called you “Heavenly Father.” My uncle used to call you the "Big Guy."

Either way, I was raised in church, and I remember hearing a lot about you in the tiny chapels of my childhood.

I love those chapels. I remember plaster ceilings which leaked, and pews that creaked when people shifted weight from cheek to cheek.

And Sunday-school teachers who made you sound like an old Western sheriff who wouldn’t take any lip. Like Wyatt Earp, or the Terminator.

But that’s not you. Not at all.

And even though I don’t know a lot about you, I know a little.

I know that you’re the sun. You’re pine trees. You’re the sky over Lake Martin. The smell of baked apples Mother used to

cook. And prettiness.

You’re the look on a kid’s face when he or she catches a fish.

You are every blessed Andy Griffith Show episode ever made. You are Aunt Bee, Opie, Barney, Otis. You had absolutely nothing to do with Matlock.

You are guitar music my uncle used to pick. You’re popping noises from hickory logs in a fireplace. You’re salted butter. Roasted pecans. Bottled Coca-Cola. And loyalty from a friend.

You’ve done things. And I’m not talking about big things—everybody knows you make the earth spin and stars twinkle.

No. I’m talking about tiny things you've done. Like how you managed to let me find a wood figurine my grandfather carved. It’s a buffalo, and it's almost a hundred years old. I found it packed in an old box.

Then there’s the time I…

Cracker Barrel, 6:39 P.M.—we are sitting at a table for our pre-Thanksgiving Thanksgiving meal. I am with my wife, my elderly mother-in-law, and her full-time nurse, Carleen.

Carleen is wearing her non-work clothes, her hair is fixed pretty. She is Jamaican. She speaks in a sing-song way. Every few words she calls folks “darling.”

I could listen to Carleen read the White Pages.

There is a deaf boy at a table a few feet from us. At least, I think he’s deaf. He has an electronic device mounted on the side of his head.

He’s using sign language with his parents. His parents sign responses.

The waitress asks for his order.

His mother answers, “He’ll have catfish.”

“MOM!” he says with a moaning, “LET ME DO IT!”

It’s difficult to get the words out, but he manages.

“I WANNA, KATT, FISH, PLEEEZE, MAAAAA’AAAMM.”

This child is pure willpower wrapped in freckles.

The table behind us: an old man and woman. They are sipping coffee. They are every old couple you’ve ever seen.

A young man walks into the dining room. He’s wearing an Air-Force uniform.

The couple

stands. “Oh, Ben,” they say in unison.

They embrace. “I missed you so much,” says the woman.

“I missed you, Mom.”

On my other side is a Mexican family. Three kids, two adults. The woman is in a fast-food uniform. The young man is in boots, dusty clothes.

When food arrives, they hold hands. They bless their plates in majestic Spanish.

The only word I understand is “amen.”

Across the restaurant: a table filled with young women. They wear matching red-and-gold jackets, “FSU” is embroidered on their backs. They are loud, excited, drinking their weight in sodas.

Several middle-aged ladies come through the doors, led by a hostess. The college girls shoot to their feet.

“Mom!” I overhear the girls say.

And if there's anything more beautiful than mothers and daughters reuniting, I…