Yeah, I miss hurricane season.

I know that sounds ridiculous, but it’s true. Ever since I left my Florida hometown and moved to Birmingham, I’ve found myself thinking about hurricane season, which runs from June to the following June.

Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t miss the actual hurricanes. But I grew up in the Panhandle and I miss seeing neighbors hook arms during times of trouble.

There is nothing as unifying as a hurricane. Despite the destruction that hurricanes bring, hurricanes also bring families and entire regions together. I don’t know how they do it. But it’s true.

I’m not saying these storms aren’t terrifying, horrific, calamitous weather events so catastrophic they traumatize everyone in their paths. They are.

But somehow everyone sucks it up and says collectively, “We’re gonna get through this together.”

And we did. We always did.

Hurricane Michael’s epicenter made landfall 33 miles from my doorstep. After the storm, my wife and I helped with some relief work. And do you know what we saw?

We saw entire towns feeding each other, clothing one another. People cut

their neighbor’s hair and paid each other’s bills. People watched each other’s kids, roofed each other’s homes, rebuilt each other’s lives. It was like a giant Love-a-Palooza.

Outsiders might look at such a scenario and say to themselves, “How awful, these towns are falling apart.” But the outsiders would be wrong. These towns were only getting stronger.

After a bad storm, it’s you and your little town against the whole world. There are no divisions. No nitpicking. No griping. Only people shouldering each other through one of the worst experiences they’ll ever have. Teenagers paint graffiti hearts on the sides of destroyed buildings, spelling words like PANHANDLE STRONG, or WE ARE ONE, or GOD BLESS US.

During my youth, our whole calendar year was built upon the possible occurrence of devastating tropical storms.

Hurricanes made their way into our…

He was born the same year Ty Cobb retired. The same era The Bambino was selling Old Gold cigarettes in the back pages of “The Saturday Evening Post.”

It was a period in American history when cowboy movies were silent, radios were loud, and Charles Lindebergh was still considered to be a little off.

The boy was born to Carl and Geneva, two average North Carolinians in an average house in an average town. They lived modest lives. They lived beneath the water tower, for crying out loud.

He was their only child. He got all their attention.

“I loved my father,” he once said. “He lived to be eighty. He smoked cigarettes every minute of his life.”

His father had a notoriously wet sense of humor. He was the kind of guy who tended to be popular in places like barbershops, feed stores and any place where old geezers play checkers.

Years later, when the boy started performing his one-man comic routine before Rotary Clubs, civic leagues, and Elks Lodges, the

boy admitted that his brand of hayseed humor came from simply impersonating his old man.

His mother, Geneva, was known by her friends to be sugar sweet. She was born just over the North Carolina state line in Old Virginny.

To get to her hometown you’d have to hop on the Blue Ridge Parkway and head north from the Carolinas. After about an hour you’d arrive in the meadows of Patrick County.

If you veer onto County Highway 602 and follow it into the sticks, eventually you will find the remnants of a tiny mountain hamlet so remote they have to mail-order sunshine from the Montgomery Ward catalog.

It is here where an ancient general store/post office still stands. It has white clapboards and a rusty Gulf Oil sign out front. The structure was built in 1892, and still does business today.

You can still go inside and…

I started to write a column but deleted it. In fact, I’ve tried writing this a hundred times, but I keep erasing it. I start crying too hard.

Initially, I was going to write about the pediatrician, Roy Guerrero, who was born and raised in Uvalde, Texas. He attended Robb Elementary.

He was at lunch when the shooting happened. He rushed over to Uvalde Memorial Hospital in the aftermath of one of America’s most heartrending tragedies.

“It was a complete madhouse—what you see in disaster movies,” he said. “Doctors and nurses in every single room, people running around like maniacs, kids in the hallway bleeding and screaming, surgeons working on kids.”

In the hall he met a fourth-grade patient he’d been treating since infancy. The child saw the whole thing happen. She saw her teacher die. She told Guerrero she had rubbed blood on herself and played dead.

That’s as far as I got when I started weeping.

I couldn’t write anything more. This has never happened to me before. I’ve written about mass shootings

before, but this one has been different.

So I took a break. I packed my laptop and drove to a public park, and tried to get my head right. Sunlight, that’s what I needed. I needed to get out of my stuffy office.

I sat on a bench. The park was busy. The exercise track was loaded with fitness enthusiasts wearing Lycra so tight you could count their ribs. The playground was overrun with children.

I saw a kid playing Superman, running around, playacting like he was flying, he used a red towel as a cape.

I opened my laptop and tried to write another column.

This time I was going to write about paramedics in Uvalde. I interviewed one of the EMTs by phone a few days ago. He had driven 85 miles to be on the scene that day. He asked if I…

Memorial Day is the unofficial start to summer, and summer was in full bloom in America. The nation experienced mostly beautiful weather.

The Midwest had highs in the 80s, The Southeast experienced temps even higher. Temperatures in the Florida panhandle exceeded approximately 173 degrees.

But it’s important to remember that it wasn’t a great Memorial Day weekend for everyone.

Yesterday in Saint Louis, for example, a man named Phillip was playing baseball with his kids while his wife, Lindsey, was making potato salad inside. The day was going swimmingly.

“Guys in my family have always played baseball on Memorial Day weekend,” Philip wrote to me this morning in an email. “It’s a longstanding tradition for us.”

Phillip was pitching. His 11-year-old son, Austin, was at the plate. Phillip delivered an easy pitch underhand. His son swung the bat like the baseball had personally insulted his mother. The bat connected.

PING!

The good news is that Phillip’s son hit a line drive. The bad news is: it was a line drive which struck a part of

Phillip’s anatomy most often associated with procreation.

The ball nailed Phillip. He howled in pain. He went down under the power. His kids all gathered around him and asked if he was okay. All Phillip could utter was, “Go get your mom, please.”

It bears mentioning, Phillip’s son was using an aluminum bat not a wooden bat. Which might not sound like an important detail to this story except that the exit velocity of a ball hit by an aluminum bat is a LOT higher than that of one hit by a wooden bat.

A ball hit by a wooden bat has an average velocity of 60 to 80 mph. Whereas a ball hit by an aluminum bat is capable of breaking the sonic barrier.

Phillip’s wife approached her husband and asked her children what had happened.

Her 4-year-old son remarked, “Austin hit daddy in…

In Washington D.C., near the intersection of 22nd Street NW and Constitution Avenue NW, just north of the Lincoln Memorial, stands a wall of black granite. It’s huge.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial consists of 140 stone panels, polished to a high finish, sunken into the earth. The panels create a massive wall that is 493 feet and 6 inches long, about the size of a skyscraper laid on its side.

You expect the wall to be big, but you’re not prepared for how big it really is. This thing is ginormous.

I was in D.C. a few months ago. The granite gleamed in the morning sun, I stood before the never-ending wall of stone, sipping a bottle of water, taking it all in. The Washington Monument was on one side, Honest Abe was on my other.

There was an old man and his grandson roaming the wall, reading the names reverently. The old man had a wild white beard, he wore an army cap.

“Look, Grandpa,” said the kid, “is this one my uncle’s name?”

“Lower

your voice,” said Granddaddy.

“But… Why are we whispering?

“Respect,” the old man said.

There was indeed a very respectful mood at the Vietnam memorial, which surprised me. I’ve been to U.S. war memorials before. And at most National Park Service war memorials the mood is nonchalant, happy even. Because most memorials commemorate wars that happened so long ago that nobody can remember them.

At the Gettysburg Memorial, for example, I saw hundreds of families pushing strollers, laughing, posing with performers in Civil War costumes, snapping selfies. At Arlington National Cemetery, I saw school kids playing tag among gravestones.

But people were silent here.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is not like other American memorials. Here, I saw old men touching the wall, heads bowed. There were people taking photos of names. There were families telling old stories. I saw a few people weeping.

There…

BRIAN—Hi, Sean. I read your story yesterday about miracles and it really hit a nerve…

I wanted to share one of my own miracles with you from when I was 23 years old and my wife gave birth, she died after delivery from sepsis and I was sure my life was over.

I thought about putting my daughter up for adoption because I didn’t think I was man enough to raise her alone and I wanted her to have the best life she could ever have, even if it wasn’t with me.

Holding my daughter on that first night I felt an overwhelming peace that it would all be okay and I should raise my daughter, knowing that I would have lots of help from above. My daughter is fifty-eight now. Thank you.

CHERYL— My miracle was when mom had cancer after she retired. They all told her there was nothing they could do.

My mother lived until age ninety-two.

BENJAMIN—I was in a car accident when I was coming home from work and

I rear ended a logging truck. I probably should have died, but I am alive because of a man who was passing by me and pulled me from my car.

DOROTHY—When [my sister and I] were girls our dad and mom were going to get divorced and me and my sister were living in fear… Because my mom wasn’t a stable person and we also knew my dad was going to leave us.

My aunt showed up that night unexpectedly to take us to come live with her in Arizona. My mom ended up in an institution for people dealing with mental issues and my dad totally disappeared.

My aunt said that it was a dream that woke her up and told her to drive those six hours to come get us and raise us.

GRACE—I’m not ready to share what happened to me yet, but…

When I was a kid I believed in miracles. All kids do. In fact that’s the best part about being a kid. You believe in practically everything and everyone.

You believe in Santa, cowboys, Bigfoot, love songs, happy endings, and you seriously believe that if Rachel Alison kisses you it means you're automatically married.

Personally, I was a big believer in eating SpaghettiOs for breakfast. I also believed in the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and especially in Dale “The Intimidator” Earnhardt. I believed in angels, in magic, and most of all I believed in miracles.

But something changed over the years. I quit believing in stuff. I can trace this change back to fourth grade when my family life sort of went downhill.

By fifth grade, my home life completely fell apart, and shortly thereafter things got even worse when my father used a hunting rifle to remove himself from our lives.

That same year I learned some basic lessons about human nature. Firstly, I learned that nobody—nobody—knows how to deal with you after

you’ve experienced trauma. So they just don’t.

Friends quit returning calls. People instinctively distance themselves from you. They don’t mean any harm, but you end up getting blackballed just the same. Eventually you become a kind of foreigner in your own homeplace.

Which is why I dropped out of school, I felt like a sideshow among my peers.

By high-school age I was working on construction sites, and I was missing out on teenage rites of passage like homecoming, prom, football games, applying toilet paper rolls to trees, and mooning law enforcement officials on spring break.

The way I grew up left me disappointed with this world. I was disenchanted. And miracles? Don’t make me gag.

But one summer when I was an adult, this too would change.

I had just finished my high-school equivalency classes and enrolled in community college. I was trying to…

Troy, Alabama. Five years ago. It was a funeral unlike anything you have ever seen before.

It was raining hard in Alabama. The bleachers in Troy University’s Sartain Hall Gymnasium were filling with mourners. Lots of them. One by one the people came.

Outside the gym a Haynes Life Flight helicopter sat parked on the pavement for effect. Surrounding it were fire trucks, police cruisers, and five-hundred acres of ambulances and flashing lightbars. The horizon was packed with emergency vehicles.

The visitors came from all over the Yellowhammer State. Coffee, Pike, Covington, Dale, Elmore, and Montgomery. They came to honor their own.

In the gym, on the free-throw line, were three caskets draped in American flags. The funerary boxes were huddled together in tight formation. The hems of their flags barely moved in the air conditioning.

Those in attendance were wearing EMS blues, flight suits, duty belts, and class-A uniforms. Many were on-call. Radios were still clipped to vests. Tactical boots were muddy. Some had been working long shifts and were running on

fumes.

Gentle murmurs came to a close when an audio recording played on the sound system overhead. It was loud. The sound reverberated off the smooth surfaces and wooden floor.

This arena usually only hears the noises of screaming fans and the squeaks of rubber shoes. On this day the court heard the last radio transmission for Haynes Life Flight Two.

The helicopter crashed eighty miles south of Montgomery, only days before this service. This radio call was a ceremonial message to the deceased, a traditional send off among the initiated.

Static. “November-Nine-One-One-Golf-Foxtrot, we show you departing with four souls onboard, we’ll take it from here…” More static.

The sounds of sniffs were everywhere. And EMS workers don’t cry often.

The accident had happened during the wee hours on an average Saturday. The helipad crew at Troy Regional Medical Center was having a quiet night when a…

DEAR SEAN:

Since I am writing a book I wanted to know what it’s like being an author. So I prepared the following for you:

1. Does it get weird when people you don’t know know your name?
2. Is writing tiring?
3. Do you get too much attention?

Write me back soon with your answers. How are Otis and Thelma Lou and Ms. Jamie doing? Tell them I said hi.

Sincerely,
10-YEAR-OLD-IN-BATON-ROUGE

DEAR BATON ROUGE:

First off, kudos for writing your book. Books are fun. Writing a book is a lot like jumping out of a speeding vehicle. It hurts, and all your friends send Hallmark cards when they hear about it.

In fact the hardest part of the whole book process is simply beginning. I have met many people who want to write books, who have great ideas for books, who possess heaps of bookish talent, but never actually sit down and write the dang book.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. You asked three well-formed questions. Therefore I will answer.

And I promise to answer with the kind of straight talk I wish someone would have used with me when I was your age.

You see, I’ve wanted to be a writer since the fourth grade. Whenever I would tell this to my teachers they usually responded by patting my head and saying, “Well, just remember God needs janitors, too.”

1. “Does it get weird when strangers know your name?”

You must be confusing me with someone else, nobody recognizes me.

Then again there was one time when I was in a train station after an author event last year. I deboarded and two excited kids rushed up to me with smiles and notebooks in their hands. I was so flattered.

One girl said, “Can I have your autograph?”

I did my best John Wayne and replied, “Be glad to, ma’am.”

No sooner had…

DESTIN, Fla.—The fireworks crackled above our little beach town. The moon was out. The beaches of my youth looked the way they always do: slammed.

“I wanna go home,” I told my wife while I hauled cheap beach junk onto a crowded shore. “I don’t care about fireworks.”

She laughed. “C’mon, it’ll be fun.”

“Define fun.”

My idea of fun is not communing with greased-up tourist torsos on a public beach to watch low explosive pyrotechnics.

“I brought a radio,” my wife said, sweetening the deal.

“Wow. A radio. Gee, Wally, neato.”

That remark got me a rib contusion.

The beach was covered in blankets and families. Loud children played tag in the dark. People grilled. There were the sounds of fireworks that shook your skull. My wife fired up the old transistor and immediately Alan Jackson started singing about the Chattahoochee.

Against my will I actually made some new friends among the summer people. Like the couple on the blanket next to ours who was eating popsicles and watching the sky. The guy said he was a preacher

from Katy, Texas, on vacation with his wife.

“Hey man,” he said, reaching into his cooler. “You wanna popsicle?” Then he glanced in both directions and said suggestively, “They’re homemade.”

Before I could consider the deeper meaning of the clergyman’s coded words my wife answered for us both and pretty soon we were sucking frozen homemade ice pops that were made entirely from tequila.

The preacher smiled. His tongue was royal blue. “Good stuff, huh?”

Texans.

After that I found myself laughing often and sometimes singing backup with our little radio. Also I had double vision. Before my wife could stop me I was already introducing myself to total strangers on nearby blankets like I was running for public office.

I met a guy cooking hotdogs on a Coleman camp stove, he was from Atlanta. He was shirtless, large, with skin…