I am proud of Morgan Love. That is all I wanted to say today.

I wish I could tell you how proud.

As the 19-year-old young woman returns to college classes this week; as teenagers herd across campus like droves of cattle; as students all over the nation engage in the long-cherished tradition of not reading the syllabus; I just want to say how proud I am to know Morgan Love.

This young woman has been on an operating table, laid open, more times than anyone can count. She has lived out the majority of the past year in hospitals.

And yet, whenever you see her, she looks like she just discovered teeth.

Although her circumstances have been dire, she is unbelievably positive. Frighteningly positive, actually. Almost as though Morgan lives in an alternate reality than the rest of us.

Namely, because whenever she receives good news from a doctor—ANY tiny morsel of good news—she runs with it. She internalizes it. She holds

it in her heart. She is an optimist of the highest degree.

As a result, the doctors are always surprised at her progress. She is constantly proving them wrong.

They said she might never walk again. A few weeks later, she got out of her wheelchair. Now, she’s jumping on trampolines, going for small hikes, and going snowsledding.

They said she might be paralyzed. She learned how to walk with a brace and eat with one hand.

They said her intestines might never digest food again. Not even liquid food. She got an ice-cream maker for Christmas.

They said she might never lead a normal life. She moved into the dorms at UAB, joined a sorority, and walks to every class.

In fact, that might be what she’s doing now. Walking to class. Maybe she’s got her phone in her hand, like all the other…

I’m on a plane awaiting takeoff. My carry-on bag is above me in the compartment. A compartment which, according to FAA regulations, is slightly too small for everyone’s carry-on bags.

There is an old man behind me trying to force his oversized roller-suitcase into storage by throwing his bodyweight against his luggage like a first-string tackle. But his efforts aren’t working because his carry-on is about the size of a Honda Civic.

But God love him, he’s trying.

A few of us passengers help him out, although we are not strong enough to bend the immutable laws of physics. 

In the process of helping, the old guy and I make friends. I’m guessing he’s mid-eighties. 

“Hi, I’m Art,” he says cheerfully, and I smell nothing but Old Spice. He answers everything with a strong Midwestern “Youbectcha.” 

“I’m from Wisconsin,” he adds.

“I’m from Alabama,” I say. 

He nods. He thumps his chest and starts the conversational ball rolling. “I was married fifty-nine years.”

“Really.”

“Ohyoubetcha.” 

“That’s amazing.” 

“Well, I learned a long time ago that marriage is just an agreement between two adults.

You don’t try to run her life, and you don’t try to run yours.”

We fall silent while the plane achieves liftoff. But not for long. He tells me about his wife.

“She was Korean. Met her when I was in the Air Force. The last thing I thought I’d do is get married, but, hey, I fell in love. She was the prettiest woman you ever saw.”

He goes on to tell me the whole love story. He tells me how he met her when he was a GI, and how he fell for her gentle spirit, her sable hair. He speaks of how she grew up in horrific poverty, of how she was an incurable optimist in the face of loss.

“...And she was smart. Spoke four languages. And when she sang in Korean, it…

I saw the mother and daughter in the hotel breakfast area. They were eating hotel breakfast; that uniquely American fare made of commercial plastic that will turn your bowels into stone. 

Mom was middle-aged. Maybe early fifties. Her daughter was maybe 18. You could tell it was her daughter because of the way she kept rolling her eyes whenever the middle-aged woman opened her mouth. 

“Aren’t you going to eat any fruit?” Mom said. 

Eye roll. “Mom.” 

“Maybe you should go get an apple.” 

“I don’t want fruit this morning.” 

“They’re pretty good apples. I had one.” 

“Mom.” 

The mother smiled. Mom went back to her breakfast. She stabbed her plate absently. 

“Did you finish setting up your dorm room last night?” Mom said, eyes still on the plate. 

“Yeah. We hung colored lights.” 

“What color?”

“Pink.” 

“Where’d you get them?”

“Target. They have great stuff for dorms.” 

Her mom smiled again. 

Mother and daughter favored each other. In many ways, they were almost identical. One of them merely looked a little more tired than the other. 

“Have you activated the credit card I gave you yet?” said Mom. 

“No.” 

“You need to do it

before I leave town.” 

“I will.” 

“You have to do it on your phone, it’s kind of complicated, you need my help?” 

Eye roll. 

“Maybe you should do it now,” said Mom. “While I’m sitting here. In case you need me.” 

“Mom.” 

The girl went back to playing on her phone. The mother was just looking straight at the girl. There was a lot of love in Mom’s eyes. But it was being aimed at a kid who wasn’t paying attention.  

“Do you need me to gas up your car before I leave town?” said Mom. 

“No.” 

“What about the oil? Doesn’t it need to be changed soon?”

The girl shrugged. 

“You have to look at the sticker,” said Mom. “They always write it on…

I was an older college student. Early 30s. Bad at math. A dropout, going back to get his degree. I sat in the back rows, with plumbers and Hooters waitresses. I had fun.

As an older student, most professors were part of my peer group. Many teachers had attended the same wild high-school parties I did. Most of which I can’t remember.

But there was one teacher who was different.

She was older. Past retirement age. She was small. White hair. Skin like tissue paper. And in an era when female professors wore T-shirts, she wore tweed skirts.

Between classes, she smoked Marlboro Lights and read books. I often hung out with her on her breaks, because I liked the way she saw the world.

She introduced me to O. Henry, Jane Austen, and Victor Frankl. The woman loved the written word. She told me to read Robert Frost. Nobody ever told me to read Robert Frost.

Once upon a time, she wanted to be a writer. But being a writer is hard business.

It’s not about skill, or depth of prose. It’s about your marketing department.

So she stuck with teaching.

For one class, we were supposed to write an essay about our hero. I am not an experienced man, I don’t have many heroes. So I chose her. The unassuming woman, who could have been great, but chose to make other people greater.

She chose to teach night classes to raggedy adults with full-time jobs. She chose a life of anonymity. I didn’t know much about her, so I drew on what I knew from her lectures.

She was born in the Dismal ‘30s. Her daddy (“deadie”) walked five miles to a factory to support a big family. She attended school in a two-room schoolhouse. One room was a classroom. One was a bathroom with a broken toilet.

There were no college graduates in her family. But her…

My granddaddy said you can tell a lot about a person by the way they treat a dog. Someone who treats a dog badly, is a bad person. A person who treats a dog with regard and deference is a good egg.

Right now, my wife is holding our blind coonhound, Marigold. She holds our rescue adoptee like a baby. Not like a dog.

Marigold’s face was struck with a blunt object. Her optic nerve scarred over. She lost her vision. The doctor removed one eye. 

“What probably happened,” the vet said, “is that someone paid a lot of money for this hunting dog, but Marigold turned out to be gun shy.” 

Her abuser wasn’t happy about shelling out thousands of bucks for a dog who doesn’t like noise. So he took his frustration out on the animal. He used a hard object. Perhaps the butt of a rifle. 

My wife is softly humming to Marigold. “I love you,” she is quietly singing to the animal.

We’ve had our dog several years now. Life with

a blind dog was tricky at first. Not like having a regular dog at all. When we feed Marigold treats, for example, you have to touch her to let her know you’re near. Then, Marigold simply opens her mouth widely, gyrating her head back and forth. 

“I don’t know where you are,” she’s saying, “but I’m opening my mouth to make it easier for you.”

Marigold’s internal schedule is all screwed up, too, because blind dogs can’t sense light or darkness. So they have no idea what time it is. Sometimes Marigold wakes up at 1 a.m. and starts licking my face. And I start cussing and I say, “Please go back to bed.” Whereupon Marigold barks with glee. Because there is nothing half as fun as 1 a.m.

But, we love this animal. Namely, because we don’t have kids. As a result, my wife…

Dear Lynn,

It’s weird. Weird knowing that you won’t be reading this today. You always read my stuff. It’s how we met. Which only raises questions about your taste in literature.

Directly after you’d read my stuff, you’d email me. You did this nearly every day. For many years.

Your emails were updates on your life. You told me about places you visited. Foods you ate. Ideas you had. About the thousands of medical appointments you endured. About the throngs of doctors in your life. About your hospital stays.

Those emails became part of my daily routine. Jamie and I both read them. Daily. We’d get a little worried whenever we didn’t hear from you for a few days.

The first time you and I actually hung out, we went to see George “Goober” Lindsey’s grave. You, me, and Jamie. It was a big roadtrip. Jamie drove the van. You sat in the passenger seat, navigating. I was in the back seat, providing the helpful service of

eating Chili Cheese Fritos.

The next time we hung out, we went to the ACTUAL Mayberry. We visited Mount Airy, North Carolina, for an Andy Griffith Rerun Watcher’s Club reunion. We spent the weekend together, watching reruns, at the Mayberry Motor Inn, along with hundreds of fellow Andy fans from around the US, who are all—and I mean this with all sincerity—clinically insane.

One time, you went to Waffle House with Jamie. The waitress thought Jamie was your date. You blushed like a schoolkid. You invited us to Thanksgiving. You were always checking up on us.

You came to many of my shows. You heard my jokes over and again. I don’t know how you weren’t sick of me. I’m sick of me.

You sat front and center the first time I played the Grand Ole Opry. I took the stage, and I could…

It was an average weeknight in Birmingham when I stood atop the Vulcan statue. Snow on the ground. I was looking at the city below, standing beneath Vulcan’s massive butt cheeks.

From atop the monument, I looked at my little town, laid out before me like a quiltwork of lights and streets. There was a young couple touring the statue at the same time I was. They were maybe 19. The boy was very affectionate with her, but she didn’t seem that into him.

“I love you, darling,” the boy kept saying.

“What time is it?” she kept saying.

I leaned on the guardrail and watched 1.11 million folks beneath me, buzzing like ants in an anthill. And I wondered what they were all doing inside their little homes down there.

Were they happy? Or were they all too busy running around to figure out whether they were or weren’t? Do these people watch reality television? If so, why?

Also, why do Americans fill up their garages with worthless junk, but park expensive

cars in their driveways? Why do hotdogs come in packs of 10, but buns come in packs of eight?

Some questions will never be answered.

Vulcan’s statue stands at 180 feet tall, altogether. He stands atop a pedestal high above Magic City. You can see him from all over town.

He is the Roman and Greek God of fire and the forge. Which is why the statue is made entirely of cast iron. This is also why he is butt naked. He is the largest metal statue made in the United States, which makes his buttocks the size of a small subtropical continent. 

When I first moved to Birmingham, friends all kept asking me, “Why Birmingham? What’s so special about Birmingham?”

At first I didn’t know how to answer them. Because I can’t explain it. Whenever people move to a new city, they usually choose a place…

Newspapers have a smell. If you’re lucky enough to find a physical newspaper in our digital world, you’ll notice the smell first. Fresh newsprint paper. SoySeal ink. Still warm. It’s a unique scent.

I grew up throwing newspapers. Not on a bicycle. My mother and I threw newspapers, riding in her beat up Nissan. We threw papers every day of the week. Weekends. Holidays. Rainy weather. Snow. Thanksgiving. Christmas Eve.

Our mornings went as such:

We awoke at 2:30 a.m. We arrived at West Marine at 3. Whereupon a delivery truck would pull up, carrying a pallet of the “Northwest Florida Daily News.” The pallet was about the size of an average Hardee’s.

Then, Mama and I would hole up in her car, wrapping newspapers while eating breakfast. Usually, Pop Tarts, or ham sandwiches.

Wrapping was the hardest part. You had to roll each paper into a tight tube. Then you shoved the paper into a tubular plastic sleeve which was about the same circumference as a No. 2 pencil.

Once a newspaper was wrapped,

you tossed it into the backseat, where your kid sister sat. She had pigtails. She was busily wrapping newspapers of her own.

Your hands would look like a coal miner’s.

There’s not much on the radio at 3 in the morning. But if you didn’t mind AM, you could listen to classic reruns of Paul Harvey. We were big Paul Harvey fans.

When we finished, the backseat was so weighted with newspapers, the rear axel sagged against the pavement, shooting sparks into the night at full speed.

My sister rode in back, buried in rolled-up newspapers. I rode up front, reciting the current list of subscribers.

And this is where the real work began. We all had roles. Mama was pilot. Kid Sister was munitions. I was tail gunner.

I would crank down the window and throw newspapers across Northwest Florida. We delivered several hundred…

The transmission of her car has given out. Every day, she hitches a ride to work because she is broke.

She works hard. Too hard. And when she’s not cooking in the kitchen of the medical rehab, delivering trays to patients, she’s a full-time single mother.

Sometimes, her kids visit her at work. They get thirty minutes for supper. Her breaks are never long enough.

The strain of day-to-day living is wearing her thin. She is overworked, underpaid, vehicle-less.

One day, she meets a patient. An old man.

In the three months he’s been in rehab, nobody has seen him move or speak. Most days, he faces the window with his jaw slung open. Empty eyes.

She’s delivering food to his room. Her emotions get the best of her. She collapses on a chair and has a meltdown.

She bawls because life is unfair. Because a busted car sits in her driveway and she can’t afford to have a mechanic look at it.

The old man stirs in his wheelchair.

His facial muscles move. And in a few moments, he looks like a man who’s

never suffered a traumatic brain injury.

He stares straight at her. His eyes sparkle.

And in a voice as clear as a bell he says, “God sees you.”

Then.

His face goes slack. His eyes become hollow. His mouth falls open, he begins to drool again.

All day, she thinks about him and his words. In fact, she thinks about it so much she can’t sleep.

The next day, she’s delivering food again. She speaks to him.

He doesn’t answer. He is completely unalert. So, she tells a few knock-knock jokes.

His face cracks a slight grin.

It moves her so much that she hugs him until she is crying into his chest. She tells more jokes.

She eventually gets a strained laugh out of him.

Then, he surprises her. He hugs her with rigid…

Birmingham. I met the old woman for coffee. She was small and slight, with a mane of white. She spoke with a thick Latin accent.

“I have a story for you,” she said.

I’m a sucker for a good story.

She worked three or four jobs. Sometimes more. She cleaned hotel rooms. She worked as a seamstress. She worked on construction crews. She was a dishwasher at a little restaurant. She was a house painter. The worst job she ever had, however, was working with a plumber. She dug ditches. Literally.

“I was not so very happy digging the ditches.”

No kidding.

Her lowest point came when her ‘83 Toyota gave out. It was the day of her son’s 12th birthday. She had been picking up extra gigs lately so she could afford a birthday present for her boy.

This meant she was working more hours. Which meant she was never home for more than 10 minutes at a time. She got used to sleeping in her car. “It was no so much fun.”

One

day, the woman was on her way to a cleaning gig. Her car sputtered and stopped on the side of the highway. It was rush hour. And her car was deader than disco. She sat in her front seat crying. This was in an age before cell phones.

The woman stepped out of her car and looked heavenward. “Don’t do this to me,” she said in Español, as cars whizzed past her by the dozen.

If you’ve ever had an automotive crisis, you know how many highway vehicles pass you by. Hundreds. Thousands even. Motorists will lock eyes with you from behind windshields, smile curtly, then fly by at 75 mph without even glancing back.

She was about to give up any prospect of help and start walking home when a truck pulled over.

Enter the mysterious stranger.

The driver was male. Bearded. Longish hair.…