We find a table in the old Spanish café and order two cafés con leche. I order our breakfast by repeatedly tapping the menus and saying in English, “Uh, I’m sorry, I don’t know this word...”

My waitress finds my ordering technique amusing.

“Why do you say ‘sorry?’” the Spanish woman asks sincerely.

But I don’t understand.

“Sorry?” I reply.

“You keep apologizing. Why?”

“Because my Spanish is awful?”

The waitress laughs. “But you did nothing wrong. Why do some Americans always say ‘sorry?’”

So I explain that we Americans who say this aren’t necessarily apologizing—per se. It’s a figure of speech. A habit. We overuse the word “sorry” even in situations when we have nothing to apologize for except Kim Kardashian.

And we aren’t the only culture to use the superfluous apology. The British start 99 percent of their sentences with this word. The ultra-polite Canadians also liberally use the S-word. My cousins live in Montreal and say that if you want to get a Canadian

to say “sorry,” just step on their foot.

But why do I, personally, do this?

With our pilgrimage to Santiago beginning today, I am wondering why I say “sorry” so often. People back home are always telling me I subconsciously apologize too much. And now people in Spain are saying the same thing. What does this say about me?

Well, for starters, it probably says I carry a lot of shame around. Which is true, of course. I was ashamed of everything as a kid.

I grew up in an abusive household. I learned how to say “sorry” whenever my father was in a bad mood. The children of such households quickly learn the art of effusive apology.

Also, I experienced shame when my father died. This is because his suicide was violent and ugly, published in local papers, along with his…

Our Father, which art in heaven, hi. How are you doing? How’s the family? Have you made any progress on that request I made earlier about Florida Powerball?

Right now, as I’m sure you know, I am miles above Madrid, Spain, captive inside a plane. There are hundreds of us human passengers crammed inside this aircraft, like oysters in a can.

And I can’t help but watch all the people.
Such as the young woman, with her phone sitting face-up on her tray table. She is traveling alone.

She keeps scrolling pictures of her kids. And I’m pretty sure she’s crying because she keeps dabbing her eye with her pinky.

At least I think they are images of her kids, because the children in the photos look just like her. She’s with them in many pictures, too. Holding them. Playing with them. Smiling with them.

I know heartsickness when I feel it, God. I can feel hers. Give her strength.

And the man on my other

side. He is older. He looks like he’s in frail health. There is a telltale scar on his neck, right at the base of his throat, from what I believe is a tracheotomy.

His wife keeps fussing over him. She’s nervously asking whether he’s taken his medication. She’s so adamant about this. So panicky.

She is also quite insistent that he not eat much salt. She is forbidding him to eat the sodium-packed airline food, but to eat instead the special salt-free food she packed even though this “special” food tastes flavorless and not unlike—to use his exact words—“something passed through the system of a cow.”

Ease her fears. Restore his health.

And the college-age girl behind me. I can hear her conversation with the older woman who is sitting beside her. They obviously don’t know each other. The older woman is sort of…

My packing list for the Camino:

Hiking boots. The route we will be taking to Santiago this year is called the Camino Primitivo. It is the oldest route to Santiago. The first pilgrim to hike this particular route hiked it 1,200 years ago, shortly after the birth of Willie Nelson.

We will be hiking over some serious mountains. So I wear boots.

Last year we were told by “experts” not to wear boots for the French route. I wore them anyway. And I was glad I did because we hiked over so many rocky slopes and mudholes I cannot imagine hiking in, say, Keds.

Sometimes I think we have too many “experts” and not enough novices. This is just my expert opinion.

One ultra-light backpack, made of parachute material that manufacturers proudly call “water resistant.” And by “water resistant” I mean, of course, “it doesn’t resist anything.”

This is the same backpack I carried on my first Camino. It has a hydration bladder inside, with a drinking hose protruding so that, while

hiking, you can effectively and efficiently look like a Class-A idiot.

When it rains, I wrap my backpack in a poncho and the pack magically becomes “water resistant.”

One fiddle. Check. It’s an old fiddle from the 1930s. It was the kind of fiddle your grandfather would have purchased out of a Sears, Roebuck & Co. catalog. The kind poor hillbillies played. It sounds like cheap trash. But I was born cheap trash. So I like it.

Last year, I carried this fiddle across Spain, and I learned a very important lesson: If you play a fiddle for Spanish people, they will give you free beer. This is why much of our first Camino is a blur.

Two main T-shirts. One of them has Mark Twain’s signature on the front. Samuel Clemens is my hero. The other shirt bears the Superman insignia. Not because I think I’m Superman,…

We leave for the Camino in two days. And I’ve been thinking about it.

We’ve been planning this trip for months. We’ve been doing six-hour training walks, eating healthy foods that taste like wet napkins, and gathering our outdoor gear.

This will be our second Camino.

People ask you about the Camino when they find out you’re doing it. Their main question is usually a version of: “Why?”

This question comes in different iterations. “Why are you doing this?” “Why are you doing this to YOURSELF?” Or in my case: “Why are you doing this AGAIN?”

And you always reply, “It’s the people.”

Whereupon, they look at you funny, then wait for you to explain. But you never can. There’s never enough time.

And even if you could choose adequate words, you still couldn’t explain something the heart feels. So, others naturally assume you’re going for the exotic experience, and for all the natural beauty. But you’re not.

It’s not the enormous sky. It’s not the arresting greenery found in craggy alpine valleys. It’s not the Pyrenees Mountains, capped

with clouds, so you can’t tell where the sky begins and the earth ends.

Neither is it living out of a backpack, having nothing to your name except what you can cram inside—which in your case is two T-shirts, a change of shorts, and a Montgomery Ward fiddle.

It is the older Brazilian woman who walks beside you. Limping because of her bad hip. Who stops at every landmark to pray. Who finds a miracle in, literally, everything. In every flower. Every sparrow. Every stray cloud. Who kisses you whenever she hugs you even though you’re an uptight American who does not kiss strangers.

It was the group of teenage boys you expected to be typical junk-food-eating, girl-chasing teens. But who, instead, walked in contemplative prayer, trying to find clarity in life. They were reading books by Saint John of the…

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…