Baker, Florida—the Gator Cafe has a full parking lot. There are horse trailers, utility vehicles, trucks with red clay on the tires.

Inside is your all-American eatery. The kind of place where you can get a decent burger, or fried catfish.

My wife sits across from me in a booth. We’re having a conversation. It's probably a good one. But the truth is I have no idea what we’re talking about. I am too caught up in the past right now.

Long ago, we sat in this same booth. I wore this same jacket. Same shoes. Same everything. I was younger.

That day, we were on our way home from Birmingham. We were tired.

Only the night before, we’d fallen asleep in a hotel bed, holding each other. Bouts of anxiety were mixed with moments of sleep. Every few minutes, we'd wake, press our foreheads together, cry, sleep, repeat.

They put her in one of those gowns. Before they wheeled her back, she squeezed my hand and said, “I’m scared.”

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” I lied.

The waiting room was Purgatory. There

was an old woman in the chair beside me. She was knitting. I asked what she was making.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m only doing this to keep from worrying myself sick.”

Right.

And since I didn’t have any yarn, I spent the waiting hours watching a hospital television.

I wasn’t in my body. I was ten miles behind my own eyeballs, thinking about the woman I married.

A woman who loved pink until one day she decided she didn't want to like pink anymore.

“You can’t CHANGE your favorite color at your age,” I explained to her.

“I can do whatever I want,” she pointed out. “It’s my life.”

And she did. She hates pink now.

This woman wasn’t like other women. She had a loud voice, strong opinions. She stopped her car for turtles that…

“He was a good man.” That’s what people are saying today. Those are the words to use on a day like today.

There are some who say things like, “He’s in a better place.” Or, “He’s at rest.”

Variations on a theme. What they really mean is: “He was a good man.”

And from what I understand, Frank Cotten was.

This is Brewton, Alabama. This visitation is a big one. There are so many folks in the receiving line it looks like a Friday night game.

They tell me the white-haired man in the casket was football.

A long time ago, they started calling him “Coach.” It became his first name. He was a principal, a city councilman, a Baptist, he sold Fords. He was good.

His son gave a speech:

“When Dad was on city council, one Christmas Eve some guy in town called to chew him out about the city's late trash pickup. And Dad just listened without saying a thing.”

Later that same Christmas Eve, Coach drove to the disgruntled citizen’s house and picked up the trash.

A good story.

But then, good stories are abundant today. Even the white-haired preacher has a few knee-slappers.

I would share them, but that’s not my right. I didn’t know the man.

Even so, I know funerals. Like anyone else, I’ve been on both sides of this receiving line. At my father’s funeral, I shook hands with a million kindhearted people, and heard a million kindhearted stories.

And, I’ve waited in long lines to tell stories of my own.

Like when my friend died at age fifty-one. The healthiest man I knew. After his diagnosis, he was gone in a matter of months.

I stood in line for forty-five minutes just to hug his wife’s neck.

While I waited, I did what everyone does. I thought up meaningful words. I tried to find a way to say something heartfelt.

I…

He was twelve years old. He’d had more than a few foster parents. He bounced from foster homes like a tennis ball.

Sometimes, it seemed like he lived out of a suitcase.

In his world he was ancient. People don’t adopt older kids. They want younger, cuter kids. Not those on the edge of puberty.

That year, his fosters forgot about his birthday. None of his teachers mentioned it, either. He bawled into his pillow. He felt so alone it stung his chest.

When everyone went to sleep that night, he walked out the door and decided not to go back. He didn’t know where he was going. Twelve-year-olds seldom do.

He wandered through a dark neighborhood for hours. He sat on a curb. He got scared. He turned around and headed for home. The police found him first.

They transferred him.

He became a difficult child, rebellious. Lost. By thirteen, he found himself in an after-school program for rowdy kids, led by a woman.

She was outgoing. She talked too much. She smiled too much. She helped the

kids make art, and taught them to sing in four-part harmony. She read books aloud.

He resisted her. He was disobedient, quiet. So, she approached him one day with soft words.

And, she handed him a scrapbook. “Here,” she said. “I brought this especially for you.”

“Me?”

Inside were hundreds of Polaroids. The pictures all had the same girl in them. The girl was doing all sorts of things. The beach, amusement parks, playing, grinning, running, wearing graduation gowns.

The girl in the pictures aged with each photo. In the newer photos, she was riding scooters, visiting Paris, cheering at horse races.

“Those are pictures of me,” she said.

“You?”

She told him she’d grown up in foster care. She told him about the counselor who suggested she make a scrapbook of her life when she was just a little girl.

It’s late. She’s driving. She's on her way home. There's something in the road. She hits it. She swerves. She loses control of the car.

A loud crash. A bounce. She’s going downhill. She's rolling. Her car is really rolling.

She screams.

And in this moment, she’s thinking, “I wish I could tell my children I love them.”

Funny. In critical moments, nobody says to themselves: “I wish I had better retirement options.”

She's tumbling down an embankment toward an icy river, thinking simple things.

Like the day she slid a ring onto her husband’s finger and promised to love him until death.

She thinks about holding her newborn daughter. The same daughter who was born with an extra digit on her left hand. A “supernumerary finger” doctors called it.

She thinks about how she nicknamed her daugher “Six.” And how the name stuck, even after surgeons removed the appendage.

She remembers her son. And Little League games. And the day after school, when he told her that he’d found hair in his armpits.

One second. That’s all it takes. One second to relive her entire

life.

How strange. Only a minutes ago, her life felt permanent. And now, it’s too damned short.

Her car hits water. She is upside down, dangling. Blood in her eyes. She is too beat-up to even cry. She is falling in and out of sleep.

The water is above her head. Then it's touching her hair. Then her forehead. Then her eyebrows. Her nose.

In her stupor she manages to say one word before she's submerged. It’s a word which, despite what some claim, has nothing to do with politics, war, or religion.

“God.”

She swallows a lot of water. The world goes black.

Then.

Sharp sickness in her gut. It is overwhelming. A burning in her lungs. A headache which feels like she’s had an argument with a hammer.

“I’m alive,” she’s thinking.

A young man sits across from me in a restaurant. It’s a meat-and-three place, with napkin dispensers on the tables.

The young man is with a girl. They’re holding hands. She’s staring at him, he's staring back. And even though my wife begs me not to, I ask how they met.

It’s my thing. Some folks make conversation about weather. I coerce complete strangers into telling me love stories.

The girl asks me to repeat myself. Her voice is uncommonly loud. He tells me that she is deaf.

“Our parents introduced us,” he explains. “We started as friends, and then...”

They're newlyweds. He is signing while he speaks.

Dinner arrives. Our food is terrible.

A few weeks ago, I met an older couple in a movie theater. White hair. Steel-rimmed glasses. They were leaning on each other like high-schoolers.

My wife begged me not to make conversation with them.

But their hair was so white.

The man said they've been married fifty years. They realized long ago that they couldn’t have children. It was a harsh blow.

But they're grateful for this today, he told

me. Because during their forties, a young woman in their town died, leaving behind a five-year-old.

That five-year-old became their daughter. Today, she has a family of her own.

“Some things are meant to be,” he tells me.

I met a twenty-year-old boy. He was a newlywed. We shared a bench at a mall in Birmingham while our wives shopped. I asked about his wife.

He’s been with her a long time already. Her brother and father died when she was not yet a teenager. She wasn’t sure she’d ever survive it. He made sure she did.

“I’ve loved her since I was nine,” he said.

They eloped last month against his parents wishes.

Parents don’t know everything.

I got an email from a man. He’d been with his girlfriend eight years. She wanted to…

I feel good. Maybe it’s the way the sun is hitting this farmland I’m driving past. The scalped fields. The blue skies.

Or maybe it’s the way my waitress kept smiling at me this morning.

I was at a truckstop, eating breakfast. It’s a good feeling to eat eggs in a room full of handle-bar mustaches.

Shaniqua was my server. It was on her nametag.

“I’m happy today,” Shaniqua said. “Just told my husband he gonna be a daddy. He started crying. He's a big ole Teddy bear.”

She was pure euphoria.

I wish I would’ve had a wallet full of fifties.

Maybe it’s the semi-truck, carrying pallets of bricks, ahead of me in traffic right now. There’s a giant tarp. It’s tattered, flapping in the wind. It’s a disaster waiting to happen.

The driver must know this because his hazards are on. He’s driving slow—probably looking for a place to pull over.

God love him.

There’s a sticker on his bumper which reads: “How Am I Driving?” and a phone number.

I dialed the number before I hit Pintlala, Alabama.

“Hello,” the woman’s voice says.

“Yeah, I’d like to report that one of

your drivers is quite exceptional.”

“You wanna what, sir?”

“That’s right, just wanna inform you that one of your drivers deserves a fat raise.”

More silence. "Is this real?”

“It is.”

“Okay, I'll write it down, sir.”

“Happy New Year, ma'am.”

She'd already hung up.

Maybe it’s the way my dog is sleeping in the passenger seat. She’s snoring.

Why can’t I be more like a dog? It takes so little to satisfy them. A belly rub, dry food, a quick roll in a foul-smelling substance, and (snap!) euphoria.

I love that word. Euphoria. For years, I used it wrong. I thought it was a continent that Napoleon conquered after he sailed the Ocean Blue in 1897. But I know what the word means now.

It…

I was born during an Alabama game. I have a Polaroid photograph of my father wearing scrubs and surgical cap.

The photo is faded. He’s eating spaghetti, nose pressed against a television which sits in the corner of a delivery room.

It happened like this: my mother called him from her delivery-room phone. He was at work.

“I’M IN LABOR!” she said in all caps.

And, like any proud, soon-to-be father, he jumped in his truck and broke the sound barrier to get to the hospital in time for kickoff.

Alabama was playing Illinois. It would be the Bear’s farewell game. I was born during the fourth quarter.

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. My father passed twelve years later.

I don’t want to talk about the particulars because this is New Year’s Day. And while I write this, Alabama has just won the Sugar Bowl.

The day after my father’s death, I quit watching sports altogether. Even baseball. In fact I didn’t do much after he died, except stare. I was good at staring.

One day, my uncle arrived on our porch with tickets in

hand. “You wanna go to a football game?” he said.

“No,” was my response. I was a very busy boy, I had a lot of staring to do.

My mother shoved me out the door. “He’d love to go,” she pointed out.

It was a long drive. We picked up my friend, Danny, who had irritable mouth syndrome—he could talk the wires off telephone poles.

Thus, we sat on my uncle’s tailgate while Danny talked. And talked. And talked. And it was the worst day of my life, second only to my first colonoscopy.

My uncle stood at a grill, poking a hamburger.

“How ya want your burger?” he asked. “Medium-well, or boot leather?”

Danny cackled.

I didn’t crack a smile.

You can’t blame an uncle for trying.

Throughout the game, Big Mouth Danny…

It's New Year’s Eve and I'm writing you from a cold front porch in Eclectic, Alabama. Over the last years, I’ve written from some interesting places. Barbecue stands, hotel lobbies, airplanes, hurricane shelters, Episcopal beer festivals.

Funny. If you would’ve told me five years ago I’d be writing at all, I would’ve called you clinically insane. This is because most of my life’s dreams have died slow, agonizing deaths.

As a boy, I wanted to be a pianist—I don’t talk about that very often because it seems silly now. I’ve played piano since age nine. Once, I competed in a piano competition. I wore a suit and played before a large theater.

My hands were trembling. The other contestants backstage were kids from big cities who spoke with New-York accents.

One kid shook my hand and said, “I’m gonna blow you out of the water, sucker.”

“Pleased to meet you,” said I.

“Aw, your mother sniffs your underpants, loser.”

I came in last place.

As a newlywed, I tried opening a landscaping business. I sunk my savings into commercial mowing equipment. Business was bad.

On weekends I’d print hundreds of flyers and shove them in mailboxes.

“FIFTY PERCENT OFF!” the flyers read. “CALL NOW!”

Pretty please. With sprinkles on top. My business folded.

I did handyman work. I laid floors, hung drywall, renovated bathrooms. I tried to do this on my own, doing odd jobs. Disaster.

I played music in rundown bars. Not fancy tourist joints. I played ugly rooms, for folks who tipped a buck to dance to “Crazy” one more time.

I’ve even worked in a few churches.

I’d rather push-mow Jordan-Hare Stadium.

After I finished community college as an adult, I applied to three major universities. The idea was to do something with my life. Writing, perhaps.

I received three response letters. Here’s one from Tallahassee: “Dear applicant, we regret to inform you that whereupon reviewing your…

There is ice on the ground. I'm walking a dog on the shore of Lake Martin at three in the morning. I’m wearing pajamas, boots, and a queen-sized comforter.

A few minutes ago, Ellie Mae—coonhound and award-winning talk-show host—woke me by whimpering.

I suggested strongly that she go back to sleep.

Whimpers.

“Go to sleep,” I strongly suggested.

Bark.

Bark.

Bark.

So here I am. It’s thirty-two degrees, the night is purple. Ellie is sniffing the ground, making zig-zags. I let her off-leash.

“Hurry up,” I plead.

But alas, instead of making tee-tee, she walks—if you can believe this—into cold lake water, paws-deep.

There goes my night.

Anyway, New Year’s is one day away, which makes me happy and sad.

Happy—because time keeps going forward and everything changes. And sad—because time keeps going forward. And everything changes.

Still, this is my favorite time. When everything resets itself. Even people.

I got a hand-written letter from a man in county prison. Let’s call him, Dave. The letter was written on notebook paper, with hand-drawn artwork covering the envelope.

“...Do you think people get second chances?” Dave writes. “Even

after we really flubbed up (not the word Dave used), can we start over again? Or is this just a lie we tell ourselves?”

I’ve been thinking about that letter. I’ve carried it in my pocket for weeks.

I carry a handful of letters with me. One is from a man who wrote me about his late wife. One is from a fifteen-year-old named Myrick. Another is from a nine-year-old, “Griffy of the South”—who shares my birthday. Another from a twelve-year-old girl whose mother died too young. I'm not sure why I'm telling you this.

Maybe it's because I'm so cold I can't feel my brain. Maybe it's because my dog has lost her mind and is wading in the Arctic Ocean.

A few years ago, I brought in the New Year in…

It’s my birthday. I’m at a gas pump at a Walmart. It’s a fancy pump, with a digital television screen mounted in it. Please Lord, bring back the days before gas pumps had flatscreen TV’s.

There is a brief commercial on the screen, then a news advertisement. Then, an ad for birth control. Birth control. On a gas pump.

Then: the Word of the Day. Elevator music plays. A word appears on the screen.

The word is: “loquacious.”

As I live and breathe. You might not know this, but that is my word. A long time ago, my father gave it to me. I’m not sure if Webster’s Dictionary has been made aware of this yet. But they’re working on it.

I remember the night I was given that word.

A man got home from work late. He called his nine-year-old into the garage. The man laid beneath a Ford, changing engine oil. His denim shirt hung on a workbench.

“Go reach into my shirt pocket,” the man called from beneath the car.

In the denim pocket was a piece of paper with several words

in sloppy handwriting.

“Read’em,” said the work-a-holic.

“What’re these big words?” the boy asked.

“Just read’em.”

The boy crawled beneath the vehicle with his father to read them. The boy could see the man’s face in the glow of his hanging shop light. The man’s cheeks were covered in oil smudges. His auburn hair was a mess.

The kid rubbed motor oil on his own cheeks and messed up his own red hair because he wanted to look like the man.

“A fella NEEDS a big vocabulary if he’s gon’ do something with his life.”

Said the man who once wanted to go to college but took up steelwork instead. The man who didn’t WANT to climb on skyscrapers, but did it anyway.

“Go on, now,” he said. “Read me them words.”

The first word…