DEAR SEAN:
What things do you believe in?
ELEVEN-YEARS-OLD-IN-CHAPEL-HILL
DEAR ELEVEN:
I believe in fried chicken. The kind made by every granny you’ve ever known. The kind fried in black iron skillets.
I believe it is powerful stuff. Which is probably why you see it at funeral receptions, baby showers, and churches.
I also believe in hand-rolled biscuits made from flour, fat, salt, baking powder, and buttermilk. To add additional ingredients to this mix would be like drawing a mustache on the Mona Lisa.
I believe in teaching young men to clean fish. I believe in kids who ask too many questions. And I believe in girls who are gutsy enough to be themselves.
I believe girls have it harder than boys. And I’m sorry for that.
I believe in giving money to the homeless—not once or twice, but every time I see someone down on their luck. Every single time. I believe in giving more than I should.
I believe in old-time country dances. Long ago, before TV’s, smartphones, and twenty-four-hour news channels, I believe people threw more parties.
I believe in bowing heads to say grace. I believe in crickets, loud frogs, and places where you cannot hear busy highways.
I believe in magic tricks. And in teenagers who haven’t found themselves yet. I believe in all golden retrievers, Labs, bloodhounds, some Jack Russels. And marriage.
I believe in Marie, Lorena, and Nadia—living at a battered women’s shelter in South Georgia. I believe in high-school dropouts, and kids who miss their daddies. I believe in nurses.
I believe in music made by hand, fiddles, upright pianos, and the poetry of Hank Williams. I believe in Willie Nelson.
I believe in the memory of grandparents, and keeping them alive with stories. I believe in making lowly people famous, and famous people lowly.
And I believe this world is better than most give it credit. I believe that if folks…