It’s the New Year and, judging by people’s resolutions, they think they’re supposed to be doing all sorts of impressive things like losing weight, saving more money, training for marathons, etc. 

Well, I’m making some changes this year, too. Only I’m making little changes. Big changes never last for me. It’s little ones that stick. So I’m going to start by making my bed every morning.

When I was a kid, my mother believed, firmly, that making the bed set a positive tone for each day. I firmly believed that. So each morning I let my mother make my bed.

But now that I’m older, I’ve decided to make our bed every morning.

Another change I’m making: I’m going to play with my phone less. Phones are time-suckers. So I’m not going to play on my phone. Instead, I’m going to spend quality time playing on my wife’s phone.

I’m going to eat more bacon. Life is too short to deprive oneself of bacon. A woman named Susannah Mushatt Jones of Brooklyn, New York, lived until age 116. She

was skinny and healthy and she ate a serving of bacon every day. But frankly, I don’t want to live to 116, so I will also eat queso dip to offset things.

I’m going to give to homeless people more often. Every time I drive past a homeless guy I think to myself, “He’s just looking for drugs.” But my conscience knows better. And addicts need lunch too.

I’m going to run some 5Ks or 10Ks, for good causes. I’m going to do this because I enjoy running, because I like meeting people, and above all, because there is often free beer at the finish line.

I’m going to have more fun, and not apologize for it. More fishing trips. More camping trips. And I’m finally going to get around to making that honey-do list. In fact, I’m going to write…

I brought in the new year with a blind dog. She was seated beside me, wagging her butt. I think she could feel the energy in the air.  

Everyone else in my house was asleep because they are—in the literary sense—massive party poopers. Thus, I was alone in the den except for Marigold, the blind coonhound. 

Marigold had one eye removed. The other eye is dead. She lives in darkness. She moves by rote. When I turned on the TV, I could see her stepping carefully through the room, looking for me. Using her nose to feel the edge of the wall.

“Here I am,” I said. 

I’m used to alerting Marigold to where I am. We’re all used to acting as her Seeing Eye Humans.

Marigold crawled upon the sofa beside me as I watched the TV-people with weird hairdos perform a countdown.

Times Square was littered with thousands of giddy people who you could have blindfolded with strips of dental floss.

And when the ball dropped, everyone on the screen cheered. My

phone started blowing up with texts from loved ones. 

But in that moment, it was just me and Mary. 

“Happy New Year,” I whispered her. 

Her tail began smacking the sofa, making a gentle “Thwat!” noise. 

Then, she used her nose to trace the contours of my face. 

Marigold will use her muzzle to feel the shape of your mouth, to see what your lips are doing. At first we didn’t know why she did this. Then we realized that Marigold was feeling our faces to see whether we were smiling. 

The way we figured this out was, whenever she felt us smiling, her tail would wag. Whereas, if our mouths were slack, if we were not smiling, she would not move her tail. 

“I’m smiling, Mary,” I said to her. 

She moved her nose to feel my tightened cheek muscles, just to…

The casket was rolled in. The piano played funeral hymns. And there I was, behind a pulpit, poised before a congregation that was standing-room only. 

There were people standing in the back of the room, lining the walls of the chapel, spilling from the balcony, filing out open doors, sitting on windowsills, or on the floor. They were four and five deep. 

And they were all looking at me.  

When I was a child, the old timers didn’t call them “funerals.” I never heard an elderly person in my family call it a “funeral.” They called them “homegoings.” 

A homegoing is very different from a funeral. Funeral means “goodbye.” Homegoing means “hello.” It’s all about how you look at it. 

My people were country people. They were simple, rural people, accustomed to living around large animals. They were church people, with scripture-verse embroidery hanging on their walls, and muddy boots on the porch. They preferred saying hello rather than goodbye. 

I looked at the casket. My cousin by marriage lay there, draped in a decorative

blanket. It was so quiet you could have heard an iPad drop. 

And well, actually, that’s what everyone DID hear. Because I dropped the iPad that contained my speech. And I nearly toppled into the choir loft when I bent to retrieve it.  

This is not my first funeral. I have been playing music at funerals since I was 9 years old. When you are born with the curse of being a mediocre musician, your main gig is weddings, funerals, and the occasional grand opening of used car dealerships. 

At my grandfather’s funeral, I sang “Amazing Grace.” I played “I’ll Fly Away” at my father’s service.

But this service was different. Namely, because this comes at a strangely pivotal time in my life. 

Yesterday was my birthday. And New Year’s Eve was tomorrow. It was like standing between life and death, perched on opposite sides…

My birthday lands exactly four days after Christmas. This means that, traditionally, I usually receive holiday gifts from family members who smile sweetly as I open presents, saying, “Just to be clear, this is for Christmas AND your birthday.”

It’s hard being born during Christmastime and also not being Jesus. But over the years, I’ve gotten used to having a post-Christmas birthday. In fact, it’s kind of nice having your big day while the whole world is between hangovers.

This birthday was a particularly big one for me. Because as of yesterday, I am now older than my dad was when he died.

I don’t know what it is about kids who lose parents young, but something happens to your childhood brain. The age at which your parent dies becomes the age you never expect to reach. It is as though someone moves the goalposts inward.

Over the years, I’ve talked with people who lost parents as children. They all sort of feel the same way.

Many of them are surprised when “That Age” happens to them.

My dad died when he was 41 years old. Forty-one was That Age for me. Last year, on my birthday, I kept marveling at the fact that I was actually still alive. I stayed up late that night, just to be sure.

And now that I’m even older than my father was, it’s weird.

When someone dies, their image is forever cemented in your mind at the precise moment of their death. And so, in my head, my father is a perpetual 41-year-old. He’s a middle-aged guy, just like me, who doesn’t know jack squat about life.

He’s walking around inside my brain, still living a regular life, still changing the oil every three thousand miles, still shouting at the radio about the importance of relief pitching.

Whenever I think of him, I realize…

Christmas break. There were little-kid toys scattered around the house, fallen in the line of duty.

A friendship bracelet kit, decimated. A loaded whoopee cushion on a chair, awaiting its next victim. A Silly Putty wad, dangling from a light fixture. 

There was a knock-off Stretch Armstrong doll, lying on the coffee table, tired and depressed. I gave the generic-brand stretch doll to my 12-year-old goddaughter for Christmas. Namely, because I had a Stretch Armstrong when I was a kid. 

I’m amazed we survived however, because the other day when I opened the box a warning label said this product contains a chemical known to the state of California to cause birth defects, cancer, and other reproductive harm, etc. 

And I’m thinking about the Christmas breaks of my childhood. I’m remembering the glory of Christmases yore, back before warning labels which caused cancer in California. Back before technology lit the world with its perpetually phosphorus glow. 

Things in America have changed since I was a boy. We were feral children during Christmas

breaks. We were dangerous. We lived without helmets. We had BB guns. We ate saturated fat. And we were never, ever inside. 

After all, there was no reason to be inside. Not if you owned a bike. I spent the first 14 years of my life with a bicycle saddle digging into my main crevice. 

If we weren’t riding bikes, however, we were likely in the woods, building campfires, making rope swings, or inventing new ways to break Joseph Tyler’s leg. 

We built tree houses, too. I don’t know where we managed to find scrap lumber for such structures, but somehow we always did. Usually, the lumber was warped, waterlogged, and came pre-treated with tetanus. 

We would haul lumber into the woods, climb trees, and use our dads’ hammers, shouting things like, “Keep it plumb!” even though, technically, we had no idea what “plumb” meant.  

Inevitably, the…

“Tell me a story?” said the little girl, crawling into her bed.

The 12-year-old turned back the sheets and fluffed her pillow. This, after she had dutifully brushed her teeth, brushed her hair, and suffered through an elaborate bathroom hygenic routine which required about as much time as it took to complete the Sistine Chapel.

“You want a bedtime story?” I said.

“Yes, please,” she said.

Then, I watched the little girl pause her bedtime regime to connect six various electronic devices to a rat’s nest of 120-volt chargers slithering upon her nightstand. She worked with her electronics so deftly, moving by rote, actuating various buttons, navigating through an impossible tangle of high-voltage cables as efficiently as a 45-year-old IT-support technician. Eventually, her bedside stand was a mass of tiny, blinking indicator LEDs. It takes a lot of electricity to be a modern kid.

“Okay,” she said, diving under the covers. “I’m ready for my story.”

I do not have kids. I know

nothing about children. I am a “guy.” I don’t think about the many unimportant things child-rearing people naturally think about, such as, for instance, lunch.

Thus, whenever our goddaughter comes to visit us, I often feel as clueless as a one-legged cat in a sandbox.

But I DO know how to tell stories. Finally, I was thinking to myself, something I actually know how to do. Because, God knows, I don’t know anything else about the mysteries of girlhood.

Yesterday, for example, we were at Home Depot when the kid announced she had to use the bathroom. I thought, no big deal. Going to the bathroom is a straightforward procedure. I waited outside the restroom for 18 minutes.

I kept calling into the bathroom, saying, “My God, are you blowing up the toilet in there?” Whereupon two elderly women exited the bathroom scowling at me.

So, I…

Christmas supper. The little girl beside me ate ferociously as though she had not eaten in 13 years when in fact she had already eaten two breakfasts, one Christmas lunch, half a bag of tortilla chips, a quarter of a cheese log, and various holiday snacks which all featured onion dip as a main ingredient.

As she ate, she bounced up and down in her seat with excitement. The china cabinet shook beneath each impact.

“You might want eat slower,” I said, watching the child scoop food into her mouth like shoveling coal into a locomotive furnace.

“I can’t slow down,” she said, mouthful. “We have to hurry.”

The girl was eating fast because we HAD to hurry and finish SUPPER because we were exchanging PRESENTS after the MEAL. I’m surprised she didn’t choke on her mac and cheese.

After supper, we all had jobs on my wife’s cleanup crew. My wife doles out kitchen jobs according to skill level and experience. My job,

for example, was transferring leftovers from their respective Tupperware containers into slightly smaller Tupperware containers.

We do this even though the original containers were working just fine because transferring leftovers is a cherished holiday job which accomplishes the very important purpose of not allowing anyone’s husband to watch football.

The little girl’s job was carrying Tupperware containers to the fridge and placing them on shelves. The little girl is blind, but I trust her with this job because she is a very capable young woman, and over the years she has learned our kitchen and knows exactly where to spill things.

Thus, I would hand the child a huge Tupperware bowl of something like boiled okra, whereupon she would take the bowl into both hands, carefully approach the refrigerator, spill the bowl onto the floor, at which point my wife would gaze upon the huge mess and remark, “You…

Joseph and Mary hitchhiked toward Memphis, riding shotgun in a semi-truck.

The truck driver kept looking at Joseph with a distrusting look. Probably because Joseph dressed like a thug. Joseph’s Snoop Dogg T-shirt and tats weren’t helping, either.

The driver let them off at Walmart. The teenage boy helped his girlfriend out of the cab. She was lovely and quiet. Tatted up. And pregnant as could be.

The driver offered Joseph cash. Joseph refused, but the driver insisted.

“Take it,” the driver said. “Your girl needs a coat, it’s below freezing tonight.”

He took the cash, namely because he had no choice. The teenage couple had left home in a hurry. Mary’s dad kicked her out. They were living with Joseph's parents, but his mother despised Mary. “That girl is just using you,” his mother would say.

So here they were in Walmart.

They walked inside the Supercenter. The women’s section didn’t have maternity jackets, so they bought a men’s work coat, double-X, brown, with all the charm of livestock excrement.

“Aren’t you going to buy yourself a coat?” Mary asked.

“I’m okay,” Joseph said.

“But all you’re wearing is a T-shirt.”

Joseph’s scrawny bare arms poked from beneath the sleeves of his Snoop-Dogg shirt. He had no body fat on his tiny frame.

Joseph’s clothes hung off him like a revival tent. He had been working as a commercial framer ever since quitting school during eighth grade. Construction work makes you lean. So does a steady diet of Marlboros and Monster Energy drinks.

They left Walmart, walking a vacant highway shoulder, looking for a place to crash. A Super 8, a Red Roof Inn, maybe a Motel 6. But they found nothing.

Then.

Mary stopped walking. She clutched her belly.

“What’s wrong?” said Joseph.

Mary’s pants were soaked. There was an instant puddle around her feet. “I think I’m having the baby.”

Joseph stuck his thumb out for a…

I’ve been saving this for Christmas Eve.

The story takes place in Auschwitz, 1941. On Christmas morning. It was cold in the concentration camp. Bitterly cold. Most of the prisoners inside were Polish, not Jewish. The Jews wouldn’t arrive until mid-1942.

The Polish prisoners were huddled together that morning, trying to keep from freezing. The temperature was low. There was frost on the ground.

The prisoners were ill equipped for the cold, clothed in striped pajamas made of thin cotton. Some prisoners used strips of torn fabric as makeshift mittens or boots.

Their hands and feet were cut and battered, from manual labor. Their clothes were soiled, from working in muddy trenches. Already, many of the Polish prisoners were suffering from frostbite. Some were dying of pneumonia. The lucky ones had already passed.

This morning, at sunup, their captors had given them a horrible Christmas present. In the roll-call square, the SS had erected a huge Christmas tree overnight. The tree was

decorated with pretty electric lights. But beneath the boughs were the corpses of inmates who had either been worked to death, or had frozen to death.

The inmates saw the bodies of their loved ones, lying there, in contorted positions, with peaceful looks on their frozen faces.

Many prisoners rushed to their loved ones’ remains, but were kicked away. The others just looked on in vapid silence.

One Polish prisoner recalled that this Christmas tree was the Germans’ “present for the living.”

And the hits kept coming. The SS announced to the prisoners that anyone caught mentioning Christmas, even just a little bit, would be killed. They were also prohibited from singing Polish Christmas carols. Forbidden from exchanging trinkets as gifts.

That day, all prisoners were forced to march into the roll-call square, in the biting frost, to listen to a radio address of the Pope’s Christmas Eve…

The young woman emailed me her story. She said she was lonely. She was 32 and single. Her therapist said she was depressed. He suggested medication. Then, her therapist asked whether she had plans for Christmas. She gave a bitter laugh and lit a Marlboro.

“Christmas is just another day,” was her philosophy.

To be fair, she had reason to be depressed. She had relocated to north Alabama for work. She had no friends in this city. Her family lived twelve states away.

Her townhome had no Christmas decorations. What was the point? Who was going to see them? Plus, she was hardly ever home. She spent her life in a cubicle.

Each year, the newly built townhouse neighborhood emptied at Christmas. It was a soulless subdivision. No decor in the yards. Namely, because most of the homes were occupied by young, urban professionals with decent jobs, new cars, and rooms full of crappy Ikea furniture.

Every Christmas, it was a mass exodus. The residents all packed up their late-model SUVs and vacated to their

hometowns.

But the girl was still home. In this vacant neighborhood. This anemic housing complex. Sort of like living on an empty movie set.

A few days before Christmas, she saw an old man walking his dog. Her neighbor. He was a widower, that was all she knew about him. She was on her front stoop, smoking, when he passed her home.

“Hi,” she said.

He gave her a nod and a smile.

Together they watched his little Yorkie waddle around the frozen grass, locked in a half squatting pose, caught in the painful throes of constipation. The Yorkie’s name was Buddha. Currently, little Buddha was having a difficult time finding the much needed relief of enlightenment.

“Are you having a nice Christmas?” the old man asked.

Shrug. “Christmas is just some other day.”

He smiled.

The conversation was brief. They bid each other goodbye…