The Crestview Rehabilitation Center is a nice nursing home. Not fancy. The cafeteria is like any other. White walls. Fluorescent lights.

It’s Bingo day. You can smell excitement in the air—or maybe that’s meatloaf. The residents in wheelchairs are ready to play.

There isn’t a single strand of brown hair in this room. Except for Railey’s hair. 

Railey is calling bingo numbers over a microphone. She’s seventeen; your all-American high-school honor student.

She aced her ACT’s, plays volleyball, wants to be an engineer, and is sharper than a digital semiconductor. She’s going places.

Places like nursing homes.

“B-four,” Railey calls.

Folks inspect bingo cards. A lady cusses from her wheelchair.

“Railey comes here a lot,” her mother says. “Now that she’s got her license, she rides her truck up here all the time.”

She comes because she been coming here since she was a ten-year-old.

Railey has no relatives here.

The first time she visited, she was three-foot-tall, delivering Christmas gifts. It was her idea. She left an armful of packages for people she worried the world had forgotten.

By age eleven, Railey was speaking at local church services, suggesting

that folks visit the elderly more often. She was asking for donations.

“I pretty much guilt-trip them,” Railey said earlier. “Just trying to get’em to donate. I gotta do what works.”

It works. She’s been delivering holiday packages to five area nursing homes. Her gift-giving operation grew so big that her stepfather bought an enclosed trailer to stockpile all the presents.

I asked Railey’s mother what sorts of gifts she buys.

“You’d be surprised at simple things these folks want. Lipstick, perfume, DVD’s... Once, someone wanted Cheese balls.”

“N-forty-two,” says Railey.

“BINGO!” a woman yells.

False alarm.

Railey might be seventeen, but she is older than I am—at least inside. There’s something inside her that’s bigger than a run-of-the-mill seventeen-year-old. Bigger than Okaloosa County itself.

“There was this old lady…

I’m going to say this now: I’m proud of you.

That’s it. You can stop reading here if you want. I know you're busy. So take the kids to karate class, scrub your bathroom mirror, schedule a dentist appointment, wash your dog, live your life. Just know that I'm proud of you.

The thing is, I don’t think we tell each other how special we are. I don’t think people get enough handshakes, back-pats, or five-dollar beer pitchers.

So I’m proud of you. For not giving up. For eating breakfast. I’m proud of you for remembering to breathe. Really.

I’m also proud of Billy. He emailed me. He’s forty-nine. He’s been working in construction all his life, and he couldn’t read until three years ago.

His friend gave him reading lessons every morning on the ride to work. And on weekends. They practiced on lunch breaks.

Billy started with elementary school books. This year he read the Complete Collection of Sherlock Holmes Stories.

He reads aloud sometimes, during lunch break to the fellas. He said he’s been practiced reading the same stories so many times, he’s almost memorized

them.

I’m proud of Leona, who had the courage to check into addiction rehab last week. She’s a young woman, and she needs someone to be proud of her. So I guess I’ll have to do.

I’m proud of her aunt, too—who is helping to raise Leona’s daughter with Down’s syndrome.

And Michael, who just asked Jessica to marry him yesterday—on Christmas morning. He squatted down onto one knee in front of seventeen family members, one woman, and her three children.

He gave Jessica and each of her children a ring.

He said, “Will you be my everything, forever and always?”

Jessica’s oldest—Brooke, age 11—got so excited she blurted an answer before anyone else.

“YESYESYESYES!” Brooke said.

I’m proud of Boyd, who got his first job as an electrician. And Lawrence, for…

Port Saint Joe—the community Christmas concert is in the old movie theater. We’re talking old-old.

Eighty years ago, this place used to have a balcony, folding seats, velvet curtains, a silver screen. Today, there is a plywood stage where Clark Gable’s face used to be projected.

The whole town came for the shindig. There are people from all parts. Old and young, rich and rural.

Small towns support their own.

I’m in the back row. There’s an old man beside me. He wears plaid. There is a golf-ball-sized wad in his lower lip. He’s spitting into a plastic Coke bottle.

The opening act is a fiddle band. They're pretty good. Gramps is singing along with the music—between spits.

“Love this song,” he shouts to me.

Gramps must’ve forgotten to change the batteries in his hearing aids.

The musicians sing several. One Christmas melody after another.

With each one, Gramps says, “Oh, I love this song.”

There aren't many Gramps doesn't like.

The local choir is next. Before they open their mouths, I see that they’re Baptists. I know this from the way they walk.

I grew up Southern

Baptist. We have a special gait. We walk this way so that we can recognize our fellow Baptists in the liquor store and avoid them.

Gramps taps his foot. He spits on offbeats.

“Used to sing in church choir,” he says. “My wife’n I were in choir together back in Georgia. She had a purty voice.”

He’s singing along gently. People start looking.

My wife gives me the stink eye. She whispers through grit teeth, “Shut up or I’ll divorce you.”

“I’m NOT the one singing,” I point out.

“Then wipe that smile off your face.”

Wives.

The next song: “O Holy Night.” I am powerless against this melody. The song takes me over. Now I am singing with the old man in a whisper.

Gramps is a perfect tenor. I sing…

It’s Christmas Eve night,
All the world’s at rest.
Ghosts and ancestors of yore,
Watch us act our best.

Families of the world,
Have tabletop manger scenes,
And writers use the word “yore,”
Though we don’t know what it means.

So eat a cookie, and smile,
And put your cellphone down,
Talk to those who love you,
And family out of town.

Kiss a baby, pet a dog,
Help with kitchen chores,
And when you ask the dinner blessing,
Find a way to use the word “yore.”

Each family—even if it’s broken,
Each kid—no matter how sad,
Should find a way to smile at Christmas,
Though life is sometimes bad.

Life can be bad, you know.
It’s not smiles and mirth for all.
There are boys who live too far from town,
To learn to play baseball.

There are girls without mommies,
Boys without their dads,
Mothers with empty purses,
Working hard for what they have.

I was

one of these.
And I’m betting you were, too.
Nobody gets life easy. No.
No matter what they do.

So I shall think of them,
The same way fire takes to logs,
I will think of the addicted, the homeless, the battered,
And unadopted dogs.

Because there is something bigger, way up yonder,
Something grander, something good.
I don’t know its name,
I just know it’s gravely misunderstood.

But it's understood on Christmas,
Because tonight it’s in the air,
Thank heaven it’s in stars and memories,
And family photos by the stairs.

It’s in tales I hear of Granny,
Killing hens with a cleaver,
The story of Uncle John,
Trapping that pesky beaver.

The stories of my daddy,
Running barefoot through the snow,
When…

I had been sixteen for under twenty-four hours. I sat in my truck. It rained. I stared at my new, hot-off-the-press driver's license.

Big nose. Goofy grin.

I hated birthdays with a purple passion. Three years earlier, Daddy died. Birthdays lost their punch.

Anyway, that day my driver's exam had been easier than I thought. I weaved past orange cones like a kid who'd grown up on a Ford 2N tractor.

After the test, I showed the license to Mama. She was proud. She fired up the skillet. While she battered chicken, I decided to take the truck out for my first legal driving experience.

“Don't be long,” said Mama. “Supper will be ready.”

I never left the driveway. My dog, Cody, sat in the seat beside me. The truck was off. It rained like hell.

My chest ached. Birthdays were supposed to be fun, dammit. Friends, family, parties. They weren't. These days were hateful reminders that happiness is a white-headed dandelion in a hurricane.

I was changing. My body was turning against me. At night, my

shins ached something fierce. The doctor said my bones were growing too fast.

Stubble appeared on my cheeks. I'd tried to teach myself to shave using Daddy's old cutthroat razor. It was like shaving with a barn axe. Blood ran all over the bathroom sink.

Sixteen.

Big stinking deal. I was sitting in a truck, in the rain, with nothing but a snoring dog and a new license.

A figure walked toward me wearing a raincoat. Flashlight in hand. The door opened and Mama crawled in. She handed me a plate wrapped in foil.

“You shouldn't have,” I said.

“No trouble,” she said. “I didn't want it to get cold.”

My shirt was greasy in a matter of seconds. Cody watched my every bite with sincerity.

“You know,” Mama went on. “One day, you're going to get a second chance at all this.…

"My mother's wedding ring was aluminum," she says, showing me a ring.

The gray band is not a perfect circle, the metal is too cheap to hold its shape.

"I wish I had more pictures of Mother when she was a kid," she goes on. "They say she was a knockout."

A knockout and a tobacco picker. She and her sisters picked 'bacca during harvest seasons near Butler County. They'd been doing it since childhood.

They worked long hours, earned pennies, lived in bunk-cabins, and made new friends. Think: summer camp for poor folks.

By age seventeen, she was still picking each season. On weekends, she and her girlfriends hiked into the woods with the other workers. They lit bonfires, laughed. Some folks brought instruments and jelly-jars. Others wore Sunday shoes.

There she met a skinny boy. He caught her eye. There was something about him. He asked her to dance. She said yes.

It didn't take long to know him—they both worked in the drying barn. She'd string blanket-sized leaves onto pine

rods. He'd climb the rafters, hanging them.

He was her first boy. For two summers they kissed. And two summers they picked side by side. When he asked her to marry, her answer was no surprise.

Then, the worst.

Only one day before their courthouse wedding, she and her sisters went into town to buy a skirt-suit for the ceremony. She walked up a flight of steps, carrying her sister's baby. She slipped.

She dropped the infant on the pavement. The baby was fine, but she wasn't. She busted her neck. They sent her to Tallahassee. Doctors said she might never walk again.

They say he refused to leave her bedside. Not even for food.

After staying motionless for weeks, her temper wore thin. She hollered, told him to leave. She said he deserved a girl in good health, not someone who might need a wheelchair.

I'm breaking promises I made long ago. Once, I swore I'd never write anything that smelled even faintly like a Gimme-The-Good-Old-Days sort of story. The kind with sentences like, "kids, when I was your age."

I've given up the fight.

Today, I went fishing. It was chilly. A skiff trolled around my beat-up boat.

It was a teenage couple. They were supposed to be fishing. Instead, they argued loud enough to beat the band. Their screaming voices traveled across the water.

Their fight ended with a round of name-calling. The young man called the girl a horrid name beginning with the sixth letter of the alphabet.

She fired back something worse.

After the fight, they spent the next hour playing on cellphones. No talking.

And just like that, my promise went out the window.

The first thing I'd like to say is:

I'd rather cut out my liver with a dull melon-baller than call a lady a name that rhymes with "truck-face." Such an act would be an affront to the woman who raised me.

Second: put

your phones away, kids.

A few days ago, it was Christmas. I visited my buddy's house. After his kids opened gifts, the children hibernated on the sofa. There, they interacted with Apple products, thumb-tapping, for three hours.

Three.

I asked if anyone wanted to play cards. They looked at me like I had lobsters crawling out my pants. Thus, I played solitaire.

That's too bad. Cards were a big deal during my childhood. I remember playing poker on the kitchen table with uncles who kept spitting into paper cups.

Back then, we had no smartphones. We had big stupid ones with cranks and four-digit phone numbers. The smartest device in our household was Mama—who could expound on anything from navigating to the interstate, to curing black lung using baking soda.

So, even though I swore I'd never say this: I miss the days…

Alpharetta, Georgia—“Hi Sean, don't ask me why, but I felt like writing you...

"Eight years ago, my sister and her best friend died in a drunk-driving accident. They were coming home from the University of Georgia.

“The guy who hit her went to prison, and this year, my mom has decided to start visiting him.

"For Christmas, she's gonna eat lunch with the guy, since prisoners are allowed visitors on holidays. I'm telling you this because, she's an incredible woman.

"She actually loves that man.”

Ray City, Georgia—“My husband, Jesse, was involved in a hit and run accident. He got thrown two hundred feet. The person left him lying in the median.

“One life-flight transport, eight leg wash-outs, two major artery losses, one muscle-harvest from his abdomen, and one skin-graft later, Jesse and I are still fighting...

“I've been given a real blessing. The blessing of being reminded what this Christmas season is about...

"Pure love."

Panama City, Florida—“My daughter tried to take her own life, Monday morning. I have no words to describe that. She's getting help now.

“I hope one day she'll understand why she's getting help, because I'd rather her hate me than lose the beauty that is her life.

"The most beautiful moment, was standing in the doorway of her bedroom last night, looking in on her and her little sister snuggled up, asleep.

"We had a lovely Christmas."

Dothan, Alabama—“I have a son with Down's syndrome. He knocked on doors for four years to raise enough money to build a Miracle Field for him to play ball.

"He hit pay dirt with the local Rotary Club. It's beautiful. Life-changing for our special needs community. And their parents."

Augusta, Georgia—“My dad gave cars away. He was a retired mechanic who bought stuff at auctions.

“Once, this lady wanted to buy one of his Craigslist cars. Dad found out she was a single mom and he flat-out…

We were friends when her mother died. It was sudden. I don't know what killed her—I was too young. I knew it was something with her liver.

It wasn't a well-attended funeral. Her mama looked strange in the casket. Permanent smile. Waxy skin. Open caskets are hard for me. Always have been.

I needed air.

I went outside to sit on the sidewalk, head in my hands. Daddy found me. He sat down and said, "Was wondering where you went off to, Ace. You alright?"

No, I wasn't. Seeing my friend's mother in a casket—the same woman who made us grilled cheeses—turned my stomach to vinegar.

He loosened his necktie. “I know it ain't easy, but you gotta be there for your friend, she needs you."

While he spoke, she came outside. She was a small girl. Freckle-faced. Toothy grin. She wore a black dress. She sat beside my father. She didn't feel like talking.

So he did.

He told stories. He talked about growing up, about tractors, eating chicken brains for breakfast, the Br'er Rabbit, and about walking on iron

beams for a living.

He made quarters fall out her ears. He even swallowed his tongue for us—one of his best tricks.

For a grand finale, he recited Johnny Cash's “Boy Named Sue.” When he got to the swear word—my favorite part of the song—we laughed.

My friend giggled so hard it made her cry. The girl leaned onto his shoulder. She lost it. Snot everywhere. I saw Daddy's eyes water. He choked them back.

“What about heaven?” she said. “Is it real?”

Daddy held her tighter. “If heaven isn't real, darling, I refuse to take part in it.”

"Can I go there?"

"Not today, honey. But in a little while."

A little while.

That was a few lifetimes ago. She left to live with her aunt in Virginia the following year. And as it turned out, Daddy gave…

This is not my story, I just wrote it down. It was told to me by a preacher. His name was Jacob, but people called him, Brother J.J.

When Brother J.J. visited our church, he was already white-haired and elderly. He was as tall as a telephone pole, and unlike most preachers, soft-spoken.

I once saw Brother J.J. fill a church during a Christmas-season service. He sang hymns and played his fiddle for two hours. Before we lit candles, he told a story which has never left me. I wish I could tell it like him.

But this'll have to do:

THE 1930's—A TENNESSEE TOWN OUTSIDE FRANKLIN. Wintertime. It was the worst time in rural America. A fourteen-year-old girl became the victim of a terrible mistake—the kind of mistake that makes a baby.

Nobody knew who the father was, but rumors claimed her uncle had abused her.

This was the old world. The only thing worse than being a pregnant adolescent, was being one in a small town.

People were vicious. In town, no

one made eye-contact. At school, the teacher asked her to stop coming. Her mother called her a whore. Her father made her sleep in the shed.

The shed.

When her father sold the timber rights to his property, a truckload of loggers arrived to clear-cut the family land.

That night, the migrant workers slept in the same shed she did. And even though the girl had a belly as big as a washtub, one man made lewd advances.

Another man came to her rescue. He fought off the offender with his fists and a furniture leg. The next morning, both men were fired. But before her hero walked away, he asked her to come with him.

As his wife.

“Why would you wanna marry me?” she…