“Dear Sean, are you a Christian? Sometimes I can’t tell. There is only one way to heaven, and your ‘tolerance for all,’ and ‘just be a good person’ philosophy sounds fine, but it leads to hell.

“...Hell is real, Sean. I read about your affinity for alcohol, and how you condone flagrant sinners. …As a Christian, I find your feel-good writing to be misleading and disgusting to Believers. There is only one way to heaven… and I believe you know this. I am not saying any of this in judgment, I am only saying this as your brother. Repent, friend. The time is at hand.”

Dear Friend. Gosh. First of all, your concern for my soul humbles me. I am honored. You sound like someone I could be friends with.

Thank you for taking time to write such a stirring and unsolicited email.

It’s funny, I used to know an elderly retired preacher who said that someone’s eternal soul was like their groin region. To just walk up and start talking about someone’s

groinal region is rude and downright uncalled for. But congratulations to you. You just jumped right in there.

The writer in me needs to tell you that your letter was extremely well written. Not one grammatical error. I am verry empressed. I actually counted your total words. There were 912. It takes me hours to write 900 error-free words.

Ergo, you spent at least an hour out of your day writing to me. How unselfish.

I’ll bet you spend the same amount of time worrying about children who are born to crack-addicted parents. I’ll bet, each day, you visit those drug-addicted babies in their lowly states.

I’ll bet you are also a frequent volunteer in the NICU, holding motherless and fatherless babies, so they don’t die of neglect. Kudos to you, sir. I wish I could be like you.

You probably also visit the homeless shelters and…

The little redheaded boy found his grandfather on the porch swing, late at night. The old man was whittling basswood, listening to a ballgame on the radio. The kid let the screen door slap behind him. The boy wore Evel Knievel pajamas.

“What’re you doing up?” said the old man. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“Had a bad dream.”

The old man patted the swing. “Step into my office, Kemosabe.”

The kid climbed onto the swing and leaned against the old man who smelled like burley tobacco, Old Spice, and sweat. The crickets were singing their aria.

“I’m scared, Granddaddy.”

He resumed carving. “Hush now. Ain’t nothing to be scared of. Just a dream.”

The ballgame droned in the background. The Braves were playing the Cardinals and getting shelled.

“What’re you carving?”

The old man held up the block of basswood. “It’s a dog. Hunting hound. This is Shelby.”

The boy looked at the crude canine figurine. It looked more like a deranged ferret than a dog.

“I know it ain’t pretty,” said the old man. “But she ain’t done yet.”

“Who’s Shelby?”

“My old dog. I got her

when I was a little older’n you. I found her. She was caught in a mess of barbed wire in our east field. Nobody knowed where she come from so I took her home and kept her.”

“That was a long time ago?”

“You have no idea.”

“Was she a good dog?”

He inspected his wooden handiwork. “She was.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Well. Old Shelby came ever’ where with me. One time I took her to a church dinner on the grounds. She embarrassed me so bad when she jumped on the table where all the fancy dishes were. Looked like she was surfing. Broke ever’ piece a china.

“I had to work a custodian job at the church that summer for punishment, sweeping the floors, touching up the pews with wood stain.”

A side-of-the-road restaurant. Way out in the sticks. The young boy was seated at the table with his mother and father.

His mother had green hair. His father was bald, with tattoos on his face and on his scalp. The little boy was using a wheelchair.

I was eating lunch in Small Town, Alabama, USA. It was a crowded meat-and-three. I had just finished making a morning speech for a convention, and I needed to meet my saturated fat quota for the day.

I found this restaurant by chance. I pulled over because the sign advertised field peas.

I am a field-pea enthusiast. I would crawl across a sewage plant on my lips to eat a good field pea.

I appreciate field peas in much the same way I love, for example, mullet haircuts. I am a big fan of mullets, which were popular during my heyday.

The horrendous hairstyle has made a stylistic comeback among America’s youth. These days, I see all sorts of kids wearing “Tennessee Tophats,” “Camaro Cuts,” “Neck Warmers” and

“Achy-Breaky-Big-Mistakys.” And I think it’s wonderful. Why should my generation be the only generation who looked like dorks?

Anyway, field peas. I like them almost as much as I like homegrown tomatoes. Both of which were served at my wedding.

The heirloom tomatoes at my wedding came from my mother-in-law’s garden, and were served on a giant plate. Everyone in the wedding party ate slices. The best man received the highest honor by drinking the tomato water.

When it comes to field peas, I like them all: Crowder peas, purple hulls, lady peas, zipper peas, big red zippers, turkey craws, Hercules peas, Double-Ds, whippoorwills, rattlesnakes, slap-yo-mamas, homewreckers, foot-tappers, and tailshakers.

But getting back to the young boy I saw.

He was using surgical prosthetic implants to help him hear. His mom and dad both ordered the field peas and the fried chicken. So did the boy.

DEAR SEAN:

My father has brain cancer. I do not have a relationship with him. I haven’t seen him in 6 years. My father is a sick man. He tore my family to pieces with sexual addictions, alcohol, drugs, and narcissism. He abused my younger sister. I hate this man now. But my heart is also torn for him.

I used to pray to God as a boy to change my father, to make him good. But this never happened. I feel like a bad son because I can’t have a relationship with my father. Do you have any advice?

Thanks,
SONUVA-BAD-DAD

DEAR SONUVA:

I decided long ago to never give advice. Namely, because advice givers are know-it-alls. And know-it-alls make life hard for those of us who actually do.

What I can tell you, however, is that I am the son of a bad dad, too. And if there is one thing I’ve learned: The real enemy is not your dad. The real enemy is hate.

My dad was abusive. I remember the first time he ever hit me. I was 5. It was evening. Supper was over. I was crying about something—the way 5-year-olds often do. I don’t even remember what it was about.

My father told me to hush. I didn’t. So, he hit me. I fell off my feet. My head slammed against the wall. I kept crying; he kept hitting. And he kept shouting, “Don’t talk back me, boy!”

My father went on to do lots of bad things. And shortly after he was released from county jail, after trying to kill my mother, he died by his own hand.

And that’s when I started hating him.

I’m sorry for writing such a downer article, but you need to know that I grew up hating my father. I hated him so badly that I did the worst…

I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. She was waiting for me. In the theater lobby. After the show. The little girl was with her family, smiling.

Theater goers were filing out of the auditorium, trying to forget the one-man shipwreck they had just witnessed onstage.

I exited stage left to go shake some hands in the lobby and apologize. And there she was.

You couldn’t miss her. An elementary-school-age kid. Big smile. Flaxen hair. Bright eyes. Holding a brightly colored poster board sign which read “I AM THE MEMPHIS BELLE.” With little hearts drawn on the sign.

“This is Luxe,” her father said by way of introduction.

That name.

I couldn’t place it at first. Luxe? Do I know a Luxe? Have I ever met a Luxe? And more importantly, do I owe Luxe money?

“Hello, Luxe,” I said.

“Hi,” came the quiet reply.

“How are you?” I said.

Then, without preamble, she hugged me. Her little arms squeezed me tightly, like she’d known me her entire life. She was about as big as a minute. Dressed up in a fancy jumper, ready

for a night on the town.

“Don’t you remember me?” she asked, mid-hug.

And something clicked in my brain. I recognized the girl immediately. I felt hot tears threaten to fill my eyes. But as I say, I promised myself to remain composed.

I wrote about Luxe Trivett. It must’ve been, what, two years ago. Maybe more. I don’t know. Time flies when you’re an AARP card holder.

No, I’m kidding. I’m not an AARP member. But I might as well be, because standing next to this fresh-faced child made me feel like the late Walter Brennan.

She was 9 years old when I wrote a column about her. She was at an outpatient residence at Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, recovering from her second bone marrow transplant for aplastic anemia.

Things weren’t looking good for Luxe.…

The call came late afternoon.

“May I speak to Sean?” said the child’s voice.

Speaking, I said.

“Is this a bad time, Mister Sean?”

Not at all. And don’t call me ‘Mister,’ it’s weird.

“What’re you doing right now, Mister Sean?”

Me? Right now? Actually, I was just trying to figure out what to write about.

“How’s it coming? The writing?”

It’s not.

“You mean you have writer’s block?”

No. I mean I am having an existential crisis, I’ve been staring at a blank screen for several hours, but nothing's happening, so I’ve decided to move to coastal Canada, change my name, and take up professional lobster fishing.

“So you can’t find anything to write about?”

That is correct.

“Well, that’s kinda why I was calling, actually. My mom reads your stories to me every night before bed.”

I’m sorry to hear that. Please don’t blame me for your mother’s terrible taste in literature.

“No, I like your writing.”

In that case, please don’t blame me for YOUR bad taste in literature.

“Last night, my mom read me your latest story.”

Really?

“Yep. And I was like, ‘Mom, how can I meet Sean? I’ve got to meet him somehow.’ And she was

like, ‘Well, let me see if I can’t get in touch with him.’ And so she did.”

So how did she find me? How’d she get this number I mean?

“My mom knows everyone. She is friends with your wife's cousin’s pet-sitter’s daughter’s roommate’s boyfriend’s aunt’s dad.”

How about that.

“So anyway, I’m calling you from the hospital right now, so I’m sorry if there is a lot of background noise.”

The hospital?

“Yes. It’s busy here. The nurses come in and out of this room all the time. I never have a moment to myself. You pretty much learn to live with them.”

Which hospital are you in, if you don’t mind my asking?

“I am in…

ABINGDON, Va.—The morning started off with rain and cool weather. This was followed by oppressive sunshine; the kind of heat that causes one to recall a Sunday school tale involving three Hebrew children.

“Is the weather always this unpredictable?” I asked an older lady on the sidewalk.

“Welcome to Virginny,” she said.

Her accent was more Tennessee than Virginny. Her hair was white. She wore a pink visor, Velcro shoes, and was eating an ice cream cone.

“Everybody always cusses the weather,” she said, licking her cone, “but nobody ever does anything about it.”

Abingdon is 15 miles from the Tennessee border. Nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. The lady has lived here all her life. I know this because she told me all about herself as ice cream dripped all over her shirt.

“Your ice cream is dripping on your chest,” I pointed out.

“Why are you looking at my chest?” she said, taking another lick.

We stood on Main Street. It was like entering the 1920s. Brick sidewalks. Old street lights. Antique houses. Hanging

ferns. Church spires.

There are no chain restaurants on Main, everything is independently owned. In a way, it is almost jarring to see no Hardee’s. No Starbucks. No Dunkin’.

“We have more restaurants per capita than New York, San Francisco, or New Orleans,” the lady said. “We are proud of that.”

Abingdon doesn’t have many capita. About 8,000 live here. So it only took 34 restaurants to earn this culinary distinction. But still.

“We’ve worked so hard to keep this town frozen in time. We have a lot of people who move here because Abingdon is the way our country used to be.”

Her shirt now looked like a fresh Jackson Pollock painting.

The town does look and feel like a snapshot of Americana. The way all small towns once were before Walmart came onto the scene. In this city, one gets the feeling that…

Cleveland, Tennessee. My wife and I are eating at a Chinese restaurant. We’ve been driving for a few hours. We pulled over in Cleveland to refuel and address pressing bladder issues. And we found this place.

The waitress asked what we wanted. We ordered a seaweed salad. This particular salad, however, was colored Legoland green and tasted like eating bait. I did not grow up eating seaweed salad.

My wife took a bite and said, “Remember when we first got married?”

“Vaguely,” I said.

“Remember when we used to get takeout from that Chinese place over by the Kmart?”

“Yes.”

“Remember how we’d always get the seaweed salad with the little thingies on it?”

“I do.”

She took a bite. Green earthworms hung from the corners of her mouth. “What do you CALL those thingies?”

“I don’t. Mainly, I just try to forget them.”

She smiled. She took another bite and I remembered a couple younger kids who used to eat Chinese food a lot.

Me with my long hair. Her with her bangs. We were poor. We had

one window unit A/C in our apartment, which only worked on days of the week beginning with L. Our idea of a big night out was eating Chinese.

The Chinese restaurant in our hometown was cheap. Duct tape on the cushions. There weren’t many places to go for dates. So that’s where we went. Plus, this place had a dart board.

Jamie was good at darts. Very good, in fact. Although, during one Iron Bowl, a dart landed in a very sensitive location of my body. Which leads me to suspect foul play.

But the food at the old Chinese restaurant was stellar. And food has always been so important to the woman I married. Some people eat to live. Jamie lives to eat.

I met her after she graduated culinary school. She wore chef’s whites for a living. She bossed…

You’re going to be okay. That’s not an opinion. It’s not a guess. This isn’t some trite little catchphrase from some crappy motivational book that reads like it was written by a greasy televangelist.

You’re going to be okay. It’s the plain truth. You really are going to make it through this junk you’re going through.

So relax. You don’t have to do anything to make everything okay. You don’t have to close your eyes extra tight, grit your teeth, use magic words, or clap for Tinkerbell.

Yes, things are bad. But you have a little, infinitesimal voice speaking to you right now. And this voice is reading these very words alongside you and saying to you, “This guy’s got a point.”

This is not your voice. It’s a voice that comes from somewhere else. The problem is, you can’t always hear this faint voice talking. Namely, because you’re too busy freaking out.

“You’ll be okay,” the gentle voice will say again. “It’s all going to be okay. You’ll see.”

But you are afraid to trust this voice.

Also, the voice says other things like: “You’re not fat. You’re

not stupid. You’re a smart person. You’re good enough. You’re very fortunate. You’re a miracle. Everyone really likes you, with the possible exception of your mother-in-law.”

So I know you’re sitting there, wondering why you’re still reading this drivel, when I obviously know nothing about you.

But you’re also thinking about how you’ve had a hard last few weeks. Last few months. Last few years. Last few decades.

You’re thinking about how often you pray for relief but it never comes. You’re thinking about how you have tried to put one foot in front of the other, but now it’s getting harder to move your legs. You want to give up.

Meantime, the little voice is practically screaming. The voice says: “Don’t quit! You’re almost there!”

Someday—I know you can’t envision…

I let him help me out to my truck. He was a supermarket bag boy. Maybe 19. Nice kid. Reddish hair. Warm smile. He spoke with a significant speech impediment.

I could not understand what he was saying, per the impediment. The cashiers had decided, apparently, to ignore him. This had to be embarrassing, but it never stopped the kid from trying.

After he bagged my groceries, I could faintly understand him say: “Do you need help out to your car?”

As it happens, I DID need help with my groceries. Namely, because a few days ago, I went tubing on the lake with my goddaughter. For those of you who don’t know what “tubing” is, this is a full-contact water activity not meant for middle-aged men with extremely high copays.

Tubing is when you ride on an inflatable tube attached to a speedboat by a ski rope.

My goddaughter had a marvelous time tubing. So did I. Until I dismounted. Whereupon I flew off the tube at high speed and “slightly” bruised my ribs.

At least that’s how the doctor put it.

“You will experience slight discomfort,” the doc said with a slight smirk.

Sleeping on my on my side has been “slightly” fun. Sneezing sends you into the Fifth Circle of Hell. Pushing a heavy shopping buggy becomes an extreme sport.

So I replied to the bagger, “A little help out to my car would be nice.”

The boy pushed my cart through the parking lot. It was a hot day in Alabama. The boy unloaded my heavy bags, sweating through his clothing, and he was talking up a blue streak.

I felt bad because I couldn’t figure out what the boy was saying, I had to keep asking him to repeat himself.

Finally the boy used all his fortitude to say the following sentence: “I know you can’t understand me, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said.…