Hi. How have you been? I know it’s been a long time since my last letter. I just wanted to tell you that we had a good year. Maybe even one of our best.

I don’t know. How does anyone score their best or worst year?

Anyway, I don’t have time to tell you everything, but I’ll hit the highs and lows.

For starters: we lost our thirteen-year-old bloodhound this year. That was hard. In some ways, it was almost as hard as losing you—which I know must sound ridiculous. But it’s true. I never thought I’d recover.

But eventually, we did recover. We found a newborn pup who gnawed on our hearts. Imagine pure love wrapped up in floppy skin and saliva. That’s her.

We got a second dog, too, because we are clinically insane people who can’t be satisfied with simply one destructive animal.

And in other news: your daughter had her second child last week.

Lucy is her name. Lucy was five pounds and fourteen ounces. So

now you have two granddaughters. Something tells me you would’ve liked that.

Let’s see, what else?

This year, I met and interviewed Miss Betty Lynn—the ninety-four-year-old woman who played Thelma Lou on the Andy Griffith Show. She kissed me, then asked if things were serious between me and my wife.

That same day, I met the son of Floyd the Barber. And also, I met and interviewed a few others who actually KNEW Andy Griffith.

What a day that was. You were missed.

Also, I’ve been wood carving a lot this year. It’s been eons since I’ve whittled. But we are on the road so much, and it’s a good way to unwind at the end of a long day.

You were the one who showed me how to whittle. Do you remember that? You and I would…

It’s winter in Western North Carolina. The hills are white. A ‘58 Chevy Impala rolls across gravel roads. A young girl is driving.

She is fifteen, not old enough to have a license. Not old enough to do much of anything except make mistakes.

And that’s why she’s leaving.

When her mother discovered she was pregnant, they had a fight. Things got heated. In a moment of fury, her mother told her, “Get outta here and never come back!” So that’s what she did.

Earlier this very morning, before sunrise, the girl stole the Chevy. It was impulsive, irrational, juvenile, and pick an adjective. She didn’t pack a coat or a change of clothes. She just started driving.

The roads are steep, covered with ice. Driving is harder than she thought. A clutch and stick shift are difficult to master.

The weather is getting worse. She cannot see where the road ends and the ditches begin.
There is a shallow bridge ahead. A guardrail. Her tires

lose traction. It happens quickly.

The car plows down a hill. It falls nose first into a creek. The whole thing happens so slowly it is almost surreal.

When she awakes, she is trapped in a car that’s filled with icy water. She is pinned inside. And maybe it’s shock, or maybe it’s because of the cold, but she passes out.

A few minutes later, she opens her eyes. She realizes she is so cold she can hardly move. She screams, but nobody is around for miles.

“This is it,” she thinks to herself. “I am going to die in this car.”

The passenger door creaks open. She sees a man plunge into the water to retrieve her. He is wearing a brown wool coat, he has silver hair.

And in her moment of delirium, she misses her late father, a man who died…

I was going to write something else. I was going to write a story about my dog, or something about winter. But I’ve changed my mind.

That’s a writer’s prerogative. A writer changes his mind all the time.

Sometimes, for instance, he changes his mind at a restaurant, mid-salad.

But today, I wanted to tell you something important. And I’m not changing my mind about this.

I hope you have a merry Christmas.

That’s it. That’s the purpose of this column. In fact, that will probably be my final sentence when it’s all over. So, you can stop reading here if you’re pressed for time.

Still, because I have a few hundred words left, I am going stretch this out. After all, if writers didn’t expound on topics, all suspense novels would only have two pages, and go like this:

“There was a guy who turned up dead. Blah, blah, blah. It was Colonel Mustard in the parlor. The end.”

And who wants to read books like that?

So

let me tell you about a kid I once knew:

There was once a kid who wanted to write. Sometimes, it seemed like he was no good at it. But that’s where you came in. You told him he could do it.

You took different forms, but you’re more or less the same person. You’re kindness. Charity. Goodness. You are every nice person that kid ever met.

You are the man in Piggly Wiggly who returned the kid’s wallet. You didn’t have to do that, but you did.

And you’re the man in Montgomery, who bought the kid and his wife a tank of gas when their credit card was declined at the pump.

You were the person who befriended the kid. You didn’t try to “help” the kid. You just let him talk.

And, you were the…

Alabama—there is a chill outside this morning. It's cold. Even my bones are cold.

I’m in a hotel elevator with two big, black men. Very big. I'm talking six-nine, maybe. They must be four-feet wide, wearing size-fifteen boots. They’re carrying luggage.

It’s not every day you ride the elevator with two NFL defensive-tackle lookalikes.

I ask if they're famous.

They laugh.

They aren't famous. But, they ARE biological brothers who had never met one another until a few months ago.

“I’m from Cali,” says one man.

“I’m from Birmingham,” says the other.

Their mother gave them up for adoption thirty-eight years ago. They found each other on the internet. Then, they tracked down their birth parents.

Their biological mother lives in Atlanta. Their father is deceased. They visited his grave yesterday.

“It was emotional, man,” one brother says. “You don’t think a dude you never met will mean that much to you, but… He was my dad.”

“Yeah,” the other adds.

Yeah.

Today, they’re going on an old-fashioned road trip together. They’re heading to Georgia to meet their birth mother before Christmas. She has no idea they're coming.

One brother says,

“I’m ready to facilitate healing to my family.”

I ask if he'd be gracious enough to spell “facilitate” for me.

We say goodbye, they waltz through the lobby. Every eye is on them because they are giants.

In the breakfast room of the hotel: a family. The back of the mother’s T-shirt reads: “Autism is not a disease.”

They are eating. The oldest boy screams at his younger brother. He is pitching a fit, making a scene. Hands flail.

The room gets tense.

She snaps into action.

She says, “Oh my! Would you look at this? It’s past nine, and you haven’t fed your toy frog.”

The kid furrows his brow.

“I did too,” he says. “Fed him this morning.”

“Interesting,” she goes on. “Then WHY did he JUST…

A nice restaurant. I’m playing Christmas music on an accordion with a band.

I play accordion because my granddaddy played it before me. This instrument is in my lineage. And it’s in our history as a civilized race.

And thusly, I believe that as long as we have young accordionists, there is still hope for humanity.

A few children approach our stage.

“WHAT KIND OF INSTRUMENT IS THAT?” asks the redhead.

“It’s an accordion,” I say.

“WOW! IT’S SO HUGE AND DORKY LOOKING!”

“That’s not very nice...”

“IT SOUNDS LIKE A DYING TOAD!”

“NO,” says another. “IT SOUNDS LIKE A CAT GETTING RUN OVER BY A CAR!”

“Hey kid,” I say. “Santa told me you’re getting nothing but underwear and deodorant this year.”

This kind of accordion shaming is nothing new. I’ve been ridiculed since my childhood. I have heard all the classic jokes.

Such as: What do you call a successful accordionist? A guy whose wife has two jobs.

Or: What are the first words an accordionist says after he knocks on your

door? “Pizza delivery.”

But I don’t care. When I play accordion, I play for my mother’s father—the man who fought in Europe, and won a Purple Heart for his valiance. He was a farmer, a storyteller, a wood carver, a musician who could sing in Italian, German, French, Spanish, and Cajun.

And when he played “Lady of Spain,” it was magic.

Of course this can be embarrassing to admit at, say, dinner parties. Like the party I was at a few nights ago.

The attorney sipping gin remarked: “I’m learning guitar, I got one for my birthday this year.”

“Yeah,” added the thoracic surgeon. “I played a little saxophone in high school band.”

“Well,” I said. “I play the accordion.”

They laughed softly. Then, one man handed me his glass and said, “I’ll take…

I saw him carrying an armful of packages. They were giftwrapped, stacked like a miniature pyramid.

He was trying to open the door with his foot.

“Hold on,” I said. “Let me get the door for you.”

He stepped backward and thanked me.

Then he slipped on wet tile. Thankfully, he did not fall. He caught himself by using me for balance, but dropped all his packages in the process. The gifts survived without sustaining any major injuries. And so did he.

That’s when I realized I knew this man.

We used to go to church together. We sang in the Baptist choir, once upon a time. He was a tenor. I sang bass.

Tenors and basses are vicious enemies from birth. The two groups have a longstanding feud. This dates back to the Revolutionary War, when American Colonies fought for independence against Great Britain, and also against Britain’s bloodthirsty allies, the Three Tenors.

Our choir was god-awful. During our choir practices, we basses would blame the elderly

tenor section for our less than optimal sound. Things often got ugly.

“Hey!” one of the basses would yell. “Adjust your hearing aids, old farts! You’re on the wrong page!”

“Why don’t you kiss my big, hairy treble clef!” a tenor would holler.

“You first, Grandpa Walton!”

“Aw, your mother’s Episcopalian!”

And a brawl would break out. The altos would be forced to break up the fight with fire hoses and horsewhips.

Being a Baptist can be fun.

Anyway, I helped him carry his gifts to his car, even though we are sworn enemies.

I learned a little about him, too. He is seventy-four. He’s in very good shape, he still sings in the choir. These gifts are for his granddaughter.

The girl is twelve. Her parents got divorced last year. She’s been caught in the horrible crossfire that accompanies…