In my front yard is something beautiful. Something living. Something that sometimes reminds me of my mother.

You might not notice this particular something. In fact, most would probably walk by and never truly see it. But trust me, it’s there. It is a tree, about eighty feet tall, with a gnarled trunk, long limbs, and thick waxy leaves.

When we were building our little home, some twenty years ago, a hapless workman with a chainsaw tried to cut this tree down. I rushed to its rescue and stood between his chainsaw and the tree, shouting, “Turn that thing off!”

Later that day I tied a pink nylon ribbon around the trunk, reminding all workmen not to harm this beautiful thing.

On cool mornings I often sit beneath these branches, reading, sipping coffee. This softwood is home to many local creatures like neighborhood cats, squirrels, lizards, butterflies, ladybugs, moths, and 52,349 birds who twitter above me and occasionally drop air-to-surface poop artillery onto my hair.

Don’t get me wrong, this tree

is not exceptional looking. Actually, it’s average as trees go. Its bark is peppered with scars, knots, and blotchy steel-colored freckles. Its oval leaves are stiff, the size of a grown man’s hand. The boughs are wild and unruly, like a mother’s arms, reaching for her child.

It’s not especially old, either. This particular tree is pushing 50 years old, although the one in my backyard is closer to 120. Still, many of these tough trees have endured droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, and the devastation of real estate development.

The older ones have lived through eras of war, stock market crashes, the ragtime age, the jazz age, the disco age, and these trees will survive the veritable hell that is the pop country age.

When I look at my tree I am fascinated by its tenacity. I am told that these things are hard to kill. They won’t die as…

I recently saw a man in a gas station scream at a cashier. The cashier was a young girl. She made a mistake and overcharged him for gas. The man lost it. I watched the whole thing happen. He stormed out of the convenience store and sped away, leaving skid marks.

She was embarrassed.

“Oh, man,” she said. “I really screwed up.”

“No you didn’t,” said a nice man standing in line. “He did.”

Be nice. That’s what my mother always told me. And I never knew her to be wrong. This was her highest aspiration for my life. She wanted me to use a soft voice, good manners, and to treat people the way I’d treat Pope Francis.

Admittedly, I have failed her many times. There was the time I was watching the Iron Bowl at a tavern in Columbus, with friends. I was seventeen, but I managed to sneak into the joint.

There was a man at the bar in an Auburn T-shirt who kept shouting ugly things to my pals. When he tossed

a glass of beer into my friend Arnold’s face things went crazy.

Arnold weighed a buck five, soaking wet, and had a stutter, he could not seem to defend himself. It took three of us to pry the man loose.

The rowdy hit me beneath the jaw so hard I bit my own tongue and said a word that is not approved by the Southern Baptist Convention™.

In the heat of the moment, I sat on the man’s chest because I didn’t know what else to do. That wasn’t very nice. My other friends joined me. Three of us sat on him like we were waiting for the three o’clock bus. My mother would’ve disowned me.

The bartender, a graduate from the University of Auburn, splashed a glass of ice water in the man’s face and shouted “You schnoz-whistle! People like you give us…

The expert on television said that post-pandemic life would never return to normal. He insisted that handshakes, crowds, parties, and hugs will forever be extinct.

“The world will probably never go back to hugs,” he said into the camera. “I seriously doubt whether we’ll see people hugging in twenty years.”

I turned off the TV, it was making me queasy. Namely, because I don’t want to live in a world without hugs. I need hugs. I miss hugs. My mother used to say the only cure for crying is a mama-hug.

Usually she would say this to a child who was crying. Then she would demonstrate.

Today I was thinking about all this when I was rifling through old photos. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Have you looked at your old photos lately?

These pictures will shock you because: (a) you used to have more hair, and (b) in every old photo you’re in a crowded place, or with a gathering, or standing in a group with arms slung

around each other, half hugging.

In many of my photos I am seated in a restaurant with others, sharing appetizers, double dipping, graciously distributing my personal bacteria among friends. My glowing face looks like it is made of neon joy.

There were the photos from baseball games in Atlanta. My wife and I were in a stadium with 42,000 other fans. I was eating nachos served in a helmet, cheering alongside strangers, exchanging germs with half of Clayton, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Fulton County.

And there were the photos from a past wedding anniversary. My wife and I went to a fancy Mexican restaurant. The waiters misunderstood when I told them it was our anniversary, whereupon fifteen employees swarmed our table to sing “Happy Birthday” in Spanish.

They placed a sombrero on my head and coerced me to ingest a shot of birthday-boy tequila. I tried to explain that I…

Monday morning. The young animal doctor knocked on the door of the mobile home, reminding himself to “be professional.” Today was going to be a hard day. A little professionalism would go a long way.

“Don’t cry this time,” the young doctor was whispering to himself. “Crying is highly unprofessional.”

An old man in a surgical mask answered the door. The old man showed the doctor into his dingy home. The doc could see right away that this was your typical elderly person residence: two TV trays, two recliners, sticky notes on every surface, prescription bottles, knitting paraphernalia.

“Where’s our patient?” the doc said, trying to sound a little too professional.

“Over here.”

The patient was lying on her dog bed, panting. The dog was honey-colored, the white on her muzzle gave away her age.

The old man knelt beside her. “She turned thirteen last month. She’s a good dog. Loves riding in the car. Ever since my wife died in December she’s been everywhere with me. We eat meals together. She’s my friend.”

Be professional.

The young doctor opened his kit. The physician’s

bag still smelled like new leather. The bag has hardly been used. He hasn’t made many house calls yet. In fact he has only recently graduated.

The doc did a brief examination then re-explained the diagnosis, just in case the man didn’t understand fully. An inoperable tumor was killing the animal.

“I understand,” the old man said.

The sound of the old man’s voice caused the dog’s tail to go THUMP THUMP THUMP.

“She's in a lotta pain.” The doc added.

“Yes. I know.”

“So if you’re ready, we can…” The doc’s voice broke. “She won’t suffer, I promise.”

Quiet filled the trailer like water in an aquarium. A television gameshow played on mute. The hum of a refrigerator. The clacking of a ceiling fan. The old man wasn’t answering.

The doctor glanced at his bag…

Major League Baseball spring training started today. I sat on my porch, listening to a radio. And I was cheering. I mean genuinely cheering.

The Atlanta Braves play the Tampa Bay Rays. The national anthem was played. The umpire used his time-ravaged voice to shout, “Play ball!” I couldn’t help but get excited because it’s been a long year. Too long.

I closed my eyes and visualized the players trotting onto the grass of LECOM Park, greeted by their fans. I could almost see the Dads drinking beer, kids eating nachos, and teenagers taking selfies.

In the theater of my mind the game played beautifully. I could even visualize the occasional kid leaning over the balcony to catch a foul ball—which is one of the great moments of boyhood.

I almost caught a foul-tip once in Fulton County Stadium as a boy. I’ll never forget it. The ball came soaring into the stands and I knew this was my moment. Time slowed down. The eyes of 52,000 were upon me. I stood beneath the ball.

I waved everyone else away.

“I got it!” I shouted. “Gimme room! I got it!”

This was going to be the biggest day of my life. I extended my Mickey Mantle model glove into the air—a mitt my father bought from a yardsale for $1. The ball came down, down, down... “Hey!” I thought, “I’m actually going to catch it!”

But it was not to be.

The ball bounced off the webbing of my glove and landed in the lap of a kid behind me. I heard the lucky bum scream with delight. “I caught it!”

I saw the kid leap. I heard people cheer. The crowd hoisted the kid onto their shoulders for a spontaneous ticker tape parade and the mayor gave him the key to the city.

I still have nightmares about that kid.

Baseball’s spell over me is something I can’t explain.…

The mall was crowded. I was maybe 5 years old. And I was lost.

If you’ve ever been lost in the mall as a little boy you know true terror. I had somehow drifted from my mother. I had been distracted by—of all things—a magic show.

I am a middle-aged man now, but I can still remember the magician’s performance with startling clarity. He wore a polyester tux, bright red, with a pink Travolta shirt. One look at that tux and I left my mother’s side.

I stood among others my age in the meager audience watching his magic act. We were all wide eyed, smelling of little-kid sweat, with runny noses.

Then, suddenly the show was over and I was lost in a shopping mall with thousands of strangers moving all around me.

What was I supposed to do NOW? Should I go look for my mother? Should I stay put? Should I ask the guy in polyester tux to saw me in half? A kid’s brain doesn’t think logically.

So I went searching for my mother,

which was the absolute worst thing I could have done because this only made me more lost. I wandered through shoe stores, clothing stores, Sears, and a candle store that smelled like a sickening mixture of pumpkin pie and Chanel No. 5.

Finally, mercifully, a tall man in a blue uniform with an eight-point cap and a golden badge found me. He said, “Are you lost?”

I began to cry.

He was an enormous policeman, nearly 14 feet tall. He squatted to my eye level. He smiled and said, “Where’re your parents?”

I cried even harder.

“Can you tell me your mom’s name?”

I tried to remember my mother’s name. But I was so scared that I couldn’t think of my mother’s Christian name. What WAS her first name? I usually just called her Mama or Ma’am. I upgraded from crying into…

Thank you. That is the​ purpose of this column. I want to say “thanks.” I don't know you, but I believe in the good you do. Especially right now.

In public, I used to see you sometimes and think to myself: "I wish someone would thank them." But I never do this because if I did, you’d think I was a complete whacko.

Maybe I am a whacko. But I’m allowed to be that way. After all, I am a columnist—sort of—and that means my proverbial box is missing a few crayons.

Long ago, I used to deliver newspapers with my mother. We used to deliver to a fella who would answer the door in pajamas. He had messy hair and a bushy white beard. He always gave me a five-dollar tip.

He was generous. If he wasn’t home one day, he would pay me ten bucks the next day. He was a columnist, my mother told me. And that’s why he was such a weirdo in weird pajamas. Even his house smelled weird.

I suppose I ought to thank him while I am thanking everyone.

Also, thanks to the man I once saw in the gas station, years ago, who bought a lottery scratch-off ticket. Who won thirty bucks, then turned around and gave the cash to a woman behind him in line. What a guy.

The woman thanked him in a language that sounded like Russian, but he didn't seem to understand, so he answered: “Alright.”

Thank you, Cindy—the woman who, pre-pandemic, once translated one of my speeches in American Sign Language for the front row​. She told me I talked very fast and now she has problems with her rotator cuff. She also taught me how to cuss in sign language.

Thank you to the seventy-year-old man who went back to school to get his GED. And his forty-six-year-old daughter, who tutored him.

And you. You deserve…

She is 92 years old and she has seen everything. Today she lives in an upscale nursing facility. I called her this morning for a brief phone interview and after a few moments of conversation, I realized this old woman really had seen everything.

She was born the same year the Great Depression began. She experienced hard times, world war, the death of children, abject poverty, prohibition.

I asked how her family got through such difficult years. She laughed and said, “We just kept telling ourselves that good times were around the corner.”

Good times. Ironically, one year ago today I was wondering what would become of America’s good times. Because at exactly this time last year I was standing in a rural Mississippi gas station when first I saw a newspaper bearing the headline “COVID-19.”

I had never seen this term before. I remember feeling a sudden chill sweep over me when I saw the word “EPIDEMIC” printed in huge letters.

When I reached the cashier she was wearing a surgical

mask and gloves. I’d never known anyone to dress this way except for maybe Michael Jackson.

Within the following weeks the whole world shut down, everyone was socially distant, TV news channels were delivering round-the-clock updates on the unfolding toilet paper crisis.

“This pandemic is a lot like the Depression,” says the old woman. “All this uncertainty, all the fear in the air. Brings back a lotta bad memories.”

Of course, she’s not suggesting that the pandemic is on the same scale as the Depression. No way. Our ancestors suffered in ways that we could never understand. We are a fortunate generation, we can order instant takeout via smartphone apps. During the Depression, families were so hungry they resorted to eating shoe leather.

I once heard an elderly man say that his family survived on ketchup and creek-water soup.

I have interviewed dozens of Depression survivors. The stories…

DEAR SEAN:

I want to write a book but I’m afraid of starting because, knowing me, I will fail, so I keep wondering whether anyone will care. Should I do it?

Eagerly awaiting your thoughts,
THIRTY-SIX-IN-MARYLAND

DEAR MARYLAND:

What I can tell you is that writing a book will turn you into a nut job. There is no way around it. All authors are nut jobs. And when you finish your book, you will be a lovable nut job too.

Here’s a day in the life of a writer. You wake up. You brush your teeth. You wander into your office. It’s tiny. It’s messy. There is a rubber chicken hanging from the mouth of a taxidermied alligator head that’s mounted on the wall. You fire up your laptop.

Mostly your writing consists of spinning in your office chair, staring at the ceiling, trying to think deep, author-like thoughts, such as, “Was it me who put the chicken in the alligator’s mouth, or my wife?” Or “What’s the capital of New Hampshire?”

Whatever you might be thinking about, you’re NOT

thinking about your book because you’re stalling. Why? Because you’re stuck. You can’t think of anything to write, so you just—

Concord. That’s the capital of New Hampshire.

Lunch break!

Phew! What a busy morning you’ve had. So you strut out of your office, fix lunch, and hope that saturated fat will fuel some more creativity and insight. When you finish eating, you feel an overwhelming urge to get to work. So you stand, stretch, and lie down for a nap instead.

See what I mean? Total nut job.

And it’s even worse for writers during a pandemic. Right now creativity is hard to come by because the pandemic is killing creativity within every industry.

People are in slumps. Many work remotely, stuck at home, with spouses shouting from adjoining rooms, dogs barking, and screaming kids running around who…

I had a dream about him last night. It has been nearly three decades since he died, but there he was. Alive. We met in some kind of diner. A breakfast joint. Maybe this was heaven?

He was running late, I was already sitting in a booth, sipping coffee. When he arrived, his first words were: “Did you miss me?”

“No,” I said.

He studied my face to see if I was joking. He could tell I wasn’t.

I couldn’t quit staring at him. My God, it really was my father. He looked good, too. Slender, red hair, tucked-in shirt, slacks. I’d gone so long without seeing him that I’d forgotten what he looked like.

But it only takes a moment to bring it all back. I could even smell his trademarked hair oil. The day after he died I confiscated his pillow and it was covered in this same scent. I slept on that pillow for five years.

“You really didn’t miss me?” he said. There was that easy smile of his. He wasn’t offended.

“No,

I really didn’t miss you.”

He ordered a Coke. And I suddenly remembered that he always drank Coca-Cola. He never was a coffee drinker. Hated the stuff. Just one of the many things I’d forgotten.

Then I started thinking about the differences between us. There were hundreds of them.

For example: he was always well-dressed, whereas I always looked like I crawled from beneath a Chevy. He was a hard worker; I sleep in on weekdays. Everyone called him “handsome”; nobody has ever ascribed that word to me. He was a planner; there is nothing I love more than cancelled plans.

When he was alive, he expected great things from me, but I failed to deliver. From a young age I knew within my kid brain that I would never accomplish the things he hoped for me.

I’m not saying I disappointed him,…