This week. Houston, Texas. The package showed up at noon on Tuesday. The UPS man rang Michael’s doorbell and propped a large box against the door.

Twenty-two-year-old Michael shuffled to the door, leaning on his forearm crutches.

Walking is no easy chore for Michael. He has cerebral palsy. He has only been living on his own since November.

It was a major life adjustment, getting his own pad, but so far he loves it.

“I basically survive on Ben and Jerry's,” says Michael. “Sometimes I eat ice cream for all three meals. I’ve gained 14 pounds.”

His mother is so proud.

Lately, Michael has been living largely, and trying new activities he never thought his condition would allow. Such as playing guitar.

He’s been taking lessons for months now. His current guitar is an inexpensive pawn-shop instrument that, when strummed, sounds about as melodic as a skillet being beaten with a dead squid.

But that all changed this week.

Michael opened the anonymous parcel on his porch and inside was a top-of-the-line Martin guitar. I asked Michael how much money

a Martin of this caliber would cost.

“Well,” says Michael. “Let’s just say it’s worth a lot of ice cream.”

He still has no idea who sent the instrument. Mom and Dad didn’t send it. Neither did his grandparents. And none of Michael’s friends have enough cash to buy a gift like this, let alone pay their own car insurance.

“I want to thank whoever sent this gift,” Michael wrote in an email. “Maybe you can thank the anonymous person for believing in me.”

Meantime, up in Western Pennsylvania, where it’s colder than a witch’s Playtex clothing accessory, they accumulated about nine inches of snow this week.

On Monday, Coach Brian DeLallo at Bethel Park High School near Pittsburgh told his football team that their daily workout was scratched.

“Due to the expected severe weather,” Coach posted online, “Monday’s weightlifting…

God lives in Woburn, Massachusetts. You wouldn’t think so, but it’s true. He lives just nine miles north of Boston, off I-93.

Woburn isn’t a huge town. These people love their high-school football, they bleed black and orange. Woburnians also love their history—the town was settled in 1640, shortly after the birth of Dick Clark.

It’s a blue-collar city with a decent mall, lots of porches, and Italian restaurants up the arrivederci.

It gets cold here. Nobody knows why God allows his hometown to get so cold, but maybe God is warm natured. Last week, for example, it was in the low 20s.

Recently, the mailman was on his beat, sidling the quiet streets of Middlesex County in the biting frost, trying not to freeze his government-issue britches off, when he arrived at Angelina Gonsalves’ house.

He rapped on the door.

Meet Angelina. Angelina is pushing 90. Her husband, Johnny, died six years ago. They were your quintessential American suburban couple. Cute house. Dependable cars. Five-point-one kids.

Johnny and Angelina were married for 61 years. To give you

an idea of how long that is, on the day of their wedding, gasoline was 27 cents per gallon.

She hobbled to the door.

The mailman tipped his hat. “Afternoon.”

They exchanged basic pleasantries. Then the mail guy asked Angelina a question.

“Wasn’t your husband in the service?”

It was an odd question. Angelina and her husband were puppies when World War II broke out. At the time, practically every living thing in America was in military service. Including women, dogs, and certain breeds of potatoes.

“Yes, he was,” said the old woman.

The mailman smiled. He presented her with an envelope. “Well, I think I have a letter for you, Angelina.”

She took the letter into her old hands and inspected it. The woman got a funny feeling inside when she saw this letter.

The envelope was aged and yellowed with…

The supermarket checkout line. She was white-haired and frail. Her buggy was filled to capacity so that it looked like she was pushing a coal barge up the Mississippi. The first item she placed onto the conveyor belt was an extra-large case of Coors.

“That’s a lot of beer,” said I.

She smiled. “On sale.”

“Are you the one who drinks it?”

She nodded. “Two beers a day keeps the doctor away.”

“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.”

“Yeah, well, I hate apples.”

Her voice had the same timbre as a tuba. She wore a pink silk jacket draped over her shoulders, buttoned at the top, á la 1952. She wore green polyester slacks such as I haven’t seen since Florence Henderson was on primetime. You could have smelled her floral scent from across the county lines. Ea du old lady.

“Get over here and help me,” she said to me, as she struggled to unload her buggy.

She didn’t say please. She didn’t say, “Young man, would you be so kind…?” She told me to “get over here.”

So I helped her.

“You’re a

nice guy,” said the woman, watching me labor beneath the weight of her 1,439-pound bag of Pedigree dog food.

“Tell that to my wife,” I said.

“So you’re married?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I was married once.”

“Is that right.”

“Yep. I was happily married for ten years. Ten outta fifty-three ain’t bad.”

Then the woman cackled and told the bag boy to fetch her a carton of cigarettes. Marlboros. Menthols.

After which she dug into her purse and removed a stack of coupons roughly the size of a Tolstoy novel and gave it to the cashier.

The cashier girl accepted the coupons hesitantly and flashed me a look indicating that she was not enthusiastic about her career path right now.

“What was his name?” I said.

The woman looked at me. “Whose…

One day you will laugh. I promise. Probably not today. Probably not tomorrow, either. But soon.

Right now you are a premature newborn, lying in the NICU, inside a plastic bubble, just trying to breathe. Your name is Harley. Your tiny heart is struggling to beat, and your little nervous system is doing its level best to keep you alive.

You have mini-electrodes, sensors, itty-bitty tubes connected to your frail preemie body, and a knit cap to keep your head warm. Your life is devoid of humor right now.

But someday, Harley, you will be a normal, healthy baby. And you’ll eventually do what all normal babies do. You’ll eat, sleep, cry, pee, and seriously attempt to swallow your entire foot. And you will laugh.

You will also create digestive messes that will cause your parents to gag. Like the legendary mess my sister made when she was 9 months old and her cloth diaper spilled its contents into her crib. Whereupon my sister engaged in some good old-fashioned finger-painting on

the bedroom wall.

After exhaustively cleaning the walls with Clorox, my father announced that he would not be eating meals again until his 90th birthday.

You will do things like that, Harley. You will grow. You will become handsome. You will stun us all with your talent. You will finger-paint.

But at some point in life, the sting of adulthood will find you. It finds us all. Someone will break your heart, you will become disillusioned, or you will lose something precious. Your health will fail. You will experience sadness, loss, or God forbid, spite.

You will learn that life is not as gleeful as depicted in the movies. Not every story has an idyllic sunset. There are no such things as unflawed heroes. Nothing works out the way you think it should.

The hard truth is, people can be mean, and life’s circumstances can be exponentially meaner. If…

A small town. The kind of American hamlet that causes you to start looking around for the Norman Rockwell signature. Hanging begonias. Storefronts with colorful awnings. A cute downtown.

There was a loud party happening on Main Street.

I followed the sound of distant music and many voices. I suddenly realized I was still wearing my pajamas. I shuffled into town barefoot, with sleep crusted in my eyes.

The sun was shining. Birds were cackling. People were everywhere. It was a veritable town-wide hoedown.

I saw women positioning casseroles on card tables. I saw children playing tag. Old men in aprons were deep frying hunks of fish.

There was music playing at the hardware store. Good music. The kind with twin fiddles. People were dancing before a plywood stage. Each front porch was crowded with people drinking lemonade and sugary tea.

Everyone was there, the whole gang. I saw them all. All my loved ones who died and left me behind. All my friends who met untimely ends. All my relatives who were called

home too early. All my kin.

They were all right here, holding plates of hot food, mingling with one another. Everybody was smiling, throwing their heads back, laughing until they couldn’t breathe.

I saw grandparents, deceased uncles, departed aunts, and cousins who died before they were old enough to know what life was about.

I saw multitudes of unfamiliar children, dancing while the musicians played “Turkey in the Straw.” I asked an old woman nearby who all these children were.

“Those are the babies who died in the womb,” the woman said. “Aren’t they precious?”

We were interrupted when a large pack of dogs came running through the town, careening up Main Street. They came stampeding like a herd of bison. Among them, I saw six of my own dogs.

I saw Lady, the cocker spaniel who died in my arms when I was a teenager.…

Dusk. I was in a nine-mile traffic jam. My dog was in the passenger seat, chewing a pig ear. The phone rang.

“Hi, Sean,” he said, “my name is Brady.”

“Hi, Brady. Any relation to Mike and Carol and Marsha?”

Crickets.

I need better material.

“Am I interrupting anything?” the young man said.

“No. I’m just sitting in a traffic jam.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be, unless you work for the Florida Department of Transportation.”

I waited for him to state the reason for the call while watching my dog gnaw the ear. When he didn’t say anything, I prompted. “What’s up, Brady?”

He sounded mid-twenties. “Well, my mom got your number from a mutual friend, I read your column every day, and I just…”

Long awkward pause.

“The column’s that bad, huh?” I said.

“No. It’s just… I’m going through some depression right now. Least, that’s what the doctor told me.”

He sounded like he was going to cry.

He added, “You’ve been through depression before, right?”

I switched the phone to my other ear and turned off my stereo. “Through it?” I said. “I don’t think anyone is ever through

depression.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m doing fine right now. But that’s right now. I’m still human.”

Over the phone, I could hear the sound of a dog barking in the background. Actually, it sounded like many dogs. My dog heard this, too. She quit chewing her pig ear and lifted her head.

“I volunteer in an animal shelter,” he said. “Sorry, it’s gets loud in here.”

My dog whimpered.

“I lost my dad when I was twelve,” he continued. “And ever since, I’ve been getting these panic attacks…

“Sometimes, I don’t feel like anyone understands me. I’ll be out in public and see kids who’re living normal lives, they’re eating in restaurants, laughing, and everything’s great for them. And here I am, all…

About a year ago. Before the pandemic. I saw him across the crowded restaurant with his elderly parents. They didn’t look like they’d aged a bit. But he did. His face was lean, his skin was wrinkled, he was gaunt. And he still had his trademark sense of humor.

I told him I hardly recognized him.

“Yeah,” he said, “it’s this new diet I’m on, it’s called being sick, the weight just falls off.”

This is not his best joke, I’m not sure whether I should laugh.

Then he gave me the real story. It’s a long one, I don’t have room to tell it all. He became very ill with an autoimmune disease. Doctors said he was dying. His parents were braced for the worst. His mother and father became his caregivers.

His parents tell me that for two years, they did a lot of talking to the sky, asking for help.

Doctors still can’t explain how he was cured. Maybe it was the treatment. Maybe it was something else. They aren’t sure. All anyone knows is

that one day he woke up better. No traces of illness are left.

“Now all I have to do is gain weight,” he tells me.

I have another friend I wanted to tell you about. I grew up with him. We once went to Mardi Gras together when we were young men—which is another long story that I don’t have time for. Let’s just say that I almost ended up as a permanent smear on a New Orleans sidewalk.

A few years ago my friend had the worst year of his life. His marriage sort of fell apart. His wife left him and took their son with her. Next he lost his business, then his money. He became suicidal.

One night, while asleep on his brother’s sofa-sleeper he had decided that he was going to end it all on the following day.…

“Yeah, I played ball with Hank Aaron,” said the old man on the phone. “Long time ago. He was a good man.”

Eighty-five-year-old Howie Bedell played with the Milwaukee Braves during the golden era. He started playing professional baseball during an era when names like Mays, Mantle, Snider, and Jackie were household names.

I talked to Howie this afternoon. He was in his living room in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. I’ve never met Howie before today. Actually, the way we met was: I looked his name up in the phonebook and took a chance.

When he answered the phone I could hear a TV blaring in the background. I heard a dog barking at the back door. I heard his wife whisper, “Who’s on the phone?”

He shushed her and said, “It’s someone calling about Hank.”

So I asked a few questions.

“Well,” Howie began, “I first met Hank Aaron at spring training in Bradenton, Florida. I was a rookie, I drove down to Florida from Pennsylvania in my first car after I signed.”

The

year was 1957. Eisenhower was president. Patsy Cline was on the radio. Gasoline was 30 cents a gallon. The Little Rock Nine had just enrolled in high school.

Howie was 22, newly acquired by the Braves minor league system. He batted left. Threw right. He stood six-one. He was 185 pounds of legs that could sprint to first base in 2.9 seconds.

“When I showed up to practice, I was nervous. I’s sitting in the dugout when someone said, ‘Hey, Howie, take the field and warm up.’”

Howie jogged to the outfield in an empty stadium. Two other players also exited the dugout: the 26-year-old third-baseman, Eddie Matthews; and a 23-year-old centerfielder from Alabama who everyone called Hank.

Howie’s heart was pounding in his throat. He stood in centerfield, crouched in a fielder’s stance, punching his mitt, trying to breathe.

Howie watched young Aaron limber up with…

I am walking in the woods on the Natchez Trace National Scenic Trail. I’m in a world of slippery elms, black oaks, and chinkapins, strolling through the Tennessee forest. The last time I walked this trail I was an 8-year-old, holding the hand of my late father. We were singing at the tops of our voices.

There are horses on the trail today. I’m walking beside one such horse, a cocoa-brown animal named Danny Boy. The older man who rides Danny Boy is kind enough to keep pace beside me because he knows I am obsessed with his horse.

I have known this animal for approximately two minutes and I’m already professing my love.

I can’t think of a prettier place to be introduced to a horse than on the Natchez Trace footpath. This famous trail spans three states, stretches 444 miles, weaves from Mississippi to Tennessee, and dates back to 800 A.D., shortly before the birth of Mick Jagger.

Amazingly, much of this national treasure remains almost unchanged by history. But for some reason, the trail wasn’t

as well known in nearby Nashville like I’d expected.

For example, at my hotel I asked some employees where the Natchez Trace trailhead was located and they looked at me like I had boogers.

“The WHAT trail?” said a guy at the desk.

“The Natchez Trace?”

“You sure you’re saying it right?”

“I believe so.”

“Wait. Is that the nightclub where the waiters set the martinis on fire?”

You have to worry about America.

Either way, I finally found the trail. And I couldn’t be happier because the footpath is the same as it was when I hiked it with my father.

The Natchez Trace is the granddaddy of American trails, predating the United States itself. In fact, this trail was here before the Chikasaw, the Choctaw, and the Cherokee.

It gives me chills to think this trail existed during the same…

At sunrise, the Great Smoky Mountains are so majestic their beauty could kill you. So are the Rockies, and the Sierra Nevadas at sundown.

The same goes for the Tetons, the Blue Ridge, the Bighorns, the Elks, the Adirondacks, and the Appalachians, which were carved by the pocketknife of God.

Oh, and the Missouri River, when seen from 34,000 feet above, it will break your heart with its glory. The Missouri moves like liquid silver across a green patchwork of American farmland. So does the Mississippi, the Rio Grande, the meandering Columbia, the Ohio, the Arkansas, the Tennessee, the Colorado, the Youghiogheny, the Chattahoochee, and the boisterous Potomac.

But then, you can also feel this wonder in other places. Like when the Gulf of Mexico reflects the colors of dusk.

Or when you gaze across the Chesapeake Bay. Past the river reeds and gray water. When you listen to the geese overhead, honking their chipper hellos.

You get this same feeling when standing on Ellis Island. You begin to

visualize the hundreds of thousands of congregated Germans, Norwegians, Chinese, Dutch, Sicilians, Hungarians, Polish, Jewish, Danish, and Swedish, all dressed in drab rags, holding tight to their entire lives, crammed into duffle bags. And it all makes sense, why your old man was such a tightwad when it came to buying your Little League uniform.

I visited Ellis Island once, I could swear I almost saw my Scots-Irish ancestors waiting in line. I could practically feel their breath on my neck.

You experience this same feeling in Savannah, within Trustee’s Garden, when an expensive tour guide reminds you that this was where the first seeds of American cotton, apples, coffee, and wheat were experimentally grown.

And when you walk Savannah’s streets to Oglethorpe Avenue, you feel a similar awe inside the home of Juliette Gordon Low; a girl who was deaf in both ears, who founded a humble youth organization in…