Here’s what I want you to do. Go outside and open your car doors. Now gather all your earthly possessions and shove them into your backseat. After that, strap the rest of your belongings to the roof, including your dishwasher, La-Z-Boy, lawn tractor, and all three of your children.

Now you know how my wife travels.

The only major difference is that we don’t have children, so our lawn tractor usually rides shotgun.

Packing the car is always a major challenge for us inasmuch as my wife does not travel lightly. My wife’s idea of travel is to bring everything but our window treatments.

Thus, whenever I prepare our vehicle for vacation mode, I painstakingly pack our car so that no space is wasted. When I’m finished packing, our automobile interior usually resembles the jigsaw puzzle from hell.

Even so, it never fails to amaze me, once our trip is finished we can never manage to fit everything back inside the car.

This often means that before we travel back home, my wife has

to make the difficult decision of leaving certain things behind, such as, for example, me.

This morning we awoke early to leave Birmingham after vacation. We have been staying in Alabama for a few weeks in a small rental cottage. We had a long drive ahead of us. But before we could hit the highway we had to pack our car.

(Cue Hitchcock music.)

As it turned out, the biggest challenge wasn’t physically loading the car. The worst issue was The Hill.

Birmingham is a hilly city in north-cental Alabama, nestled beneath the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. Most residents have to use rappelling equipment to check the mailbox.

Our rental house was located on the summit of a steep hill which the locals loosely refer to as Mount Concussion. There were approximately 43,118 concrete steps leading from the curb to our porch. You could actually…

The old man saw her on the interstate. It was a dog, seated in the median of the busy highway. The old girl was frightened and unmoving.

The highway was screaming with traffic. On each side of the median were rivers of speeding headlamps. The road was too busy to cross. So the dog sat in the grass.

When the old man saw her, he flipped on his hazards. He eased to a stop on the shoulder and leapt into the tall weeds, bounding for her.

As the old man made his way through the grass, he was simultaneously removing his belt to use as a makeshift leash. Which caused his pants to fall down. Which revealed his bare backside to all eastbound motorists on I-10 that evening.

“I don’t wear underwear,” the old man told me during our interview. “Too constricting.”

When he reached the dog, she looked at him with pleading eyes. She was nervously panting.

“I spoke Spanish to her,” said the old man. “My mom was from Mexico City, she believed

that dogs listened to Spanish better than English. Dogs always listened to my mom.”

He looped the belt around the animal’s head then led her to his car. He noticed she was limping and whimpering.

“She was hurt worse than I’d thought,” he said. “She was bleeding all over my backseat.”

I’ll spare you the gory details and simply tell you that it was an ugly wound. A life-threatening one. She needed medical attention. And fast.

So our hero used his smartphone to search for emergency veterinary doctors.

The old man was on his way to Texas that night to visit his daughters. He was a foreigner in a foreign land. And he must have been quite a sight, too.

A confused old man, standing on the shoulder, in the middle of the night, looking at his phone, with a portion of his bare white…

Lord have mercy. Betty White is dead. She inherited her Eternal Reward today on New Year’s Eve, at age 99. Less than 24 hours before the New Year.

It’s been quite a year.

She was the last Golden Girl to go. Her co-star, Estelle Getty (Sophia), died in 2008 at 84 from dementia. Bea Arthur (Dorothy) died of cancer at 86 in 2009. Rue McClanahan (Blanche) died at 76 in 2010 from a stroke. And now Betty.

Lord have mercy.

Most people, of course, will forever remember Betty as her character, Rose Nylund, the giddy Golden Girl from Saint Olaf, Minnesota. But, for some reason, I will always remember her character from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

When I was a boy, our local channel would play Mary Tyler Moore reruns before I caught the schoolbus. I would sit before a screen and laugh whenever Betty White appeared. She cracked immodest jokes, which I somehow knew were inappropriate for freckled Baptist boys. I liked her right then.

But then, so did the rest

of the nation. She was America’s grandmother. And she was funny, as evidenced in few of Betty’s words:

“Facebook just sounds like a drag. In my day, seeing pictures of peoples’ vacations was considered punishment.”

“Vodka is kind of a hobby.”

And my personal favorite:

“The older you get, the better you get. Unless you’re a banana.”

This morning, my neighbor received her current copy of “People” magazine. I saw the glossy issue poking out of the old woman’s mailbox. The cover featured a photo of Betty White with a bold headline that read: “Betty White Turns 100!”

Betty died just seventeen days shy of her 100th birthday. Talk about black irony.

We lose beautiful things every day. Every morning, it seems like something wonderful breathes its last. This year I’ve lost too many friends and too many family members.

In 2021 I attended more funerals than…

The day before New Year’s Eve. I was stuck in Birmingham rush hour. A ten-mile line of standstill traffic stretched before me. It looked like I wouldn’t be getting home until sometime around the next papal installation.

The Dodge truck beside me towed a gooseneck horse trailer. Inside was a white horse, staring at me from her open window, chewing a mouthful of alfalfa.

You might not care about this, but as a boy I was obsessed with horses. I grew up around horse people. I rode some; I wasn’t any good.

Even so, I was always thinking about horses, drawing pictures of quarterhorses in notebooks, reading novels like “National Velvet” and “My Friend Flicka.”

“The Black Stallion” was perhaps one of the greatest horse movies ever made.

All these memories came back to me while looking at that horse. She ate her dinner of legume hay, sniffing the Alabamian breeze, cheerfully watching the passing eighteen-wheelers, the UPS trucks, the public transit busses, the Porsches, and the giant SUVs which were roughly the size of rural school

districts.

And I fell in love with her right there.

The horse had other admirers in traffic, too. There were teenagers in the Nissan ahead of me, rolling down their windows to greet her.

“HEY, HORSEY!” they howled.

Soon, everyone in traffic was staring at these obnoxious teenagers who tried wildly to get the horse’s attention.

After watching the teenagers for a few minutes, I decided that I had never seen behavior so ridiculous and immature in all my life, and I wanted to be part of it.

So I cranked down my window and joined them.

And do you know what? No sooner had I rolled down my window than I discovered other adult motorists were doing the same thing I was doing.

An older man in a nice suit, driving a Land Rover Defender, was speaking to the horse.

A young…

My phone vibrated. The first birthday text of the day came from the old man who coached my Little League team after my father died. He made a real impact on me during a time when I was most vulnerable.

“Happy birthday, Samuel!” he texted.

I was so moved. And although, technically, my name is not Samuel (it’s Sean), it is still nice to be remembered.

The next email I received was from a guy in Mayfield, Kentucky. He’s busy helping with the relief efforts after the devastation from the tornadoes.

“Happy birthday, Sean…” the man’s letter began. “I love you.”

I could not believe that in the midst of a veritable ground zero, this man took the time to wish me a happy birthday. This time, I cried.

Later, my phone vibrated again. An old friend who is currently undergoing cancer treatment in California messaged.

“Happy birthday, Sean…” was the gist of the email she sent during her chemo treatment.

This woman who is undergoing the worst trial of her lifetime paused to wish me well.

My cup runneth all over the place.

Throughout the day, the phone rattled in my pocket nonstop. My mother texted. My sister. Old coworkers. My cousins. My uncles. My old employers. Someone with important information about my vehicle warranty.

And I got a text from my pal, Guillermo.

Ah, Guillermo. I met Guillermo in a Walmart parking lot many years ago. My heap-of-junk Buick had broken down. Guillermo saw me from across the lot, struggling. He fixed my engine although he did not speak a lick of Norte-Americano.

That night, I figured out that Guillermo was living in his car in the Walmart parking lot. He was camped there until he got enough money to fix his Honda’s transmission.

And since I speak fluent hand gestures, I asked him if he wanted to come live with me and my wife.

I will never…

Erin has a guardian angel. A real one.

This supernatural cherub was a gift from her mother, long ago. It all started when Erin was six years old. Her dying mother called Erin to her sickbed, said a prayer, and gifted her daughter an angel. Simple as that.

After her mother passed, Erin was raised by her grandmother in a ramshackle house near the railroad tracks. Times were not easy. Her grandmother was a single parent, and kids ain’t cheap. Simple as that.

“We ate a lot of Hamburger Helper,” said Erin. “And we shopped at thrift stores.”

But an angel is worth a lot more than greenbacks. Especially an angel like hers, who has made himself evident at pivotal moments throughout her life.

There was the time in elementary school when Erin fell off a low balcony at her friend’s house. When she opened her eyes, she was in no pain. The doc couldn’t believe what he saw. Not a bone broken.

There was the time in high school when she was driving on

the interstate. A voice inside Erin said, “Take the exit, and wait at the gas station.”

She did. On that same highway, on that same night, an auto collision occurred involving an eighteen-wheeler. Four people died.

There was the time when Erin was engaged to a young man whom she thought she loved. The wedding was fast approaching, but something inside her said, “This is wrong. Do not marry him.”

She called off the ceremony, simple as that.

Erin gave back the wedding gifts. She returned the ring. And many years later, Erin realizes she made the right call. The man she might have married has already been remarried thrice.

Another time, she was in an apartment building visiting a friend. There was a man in the hallway who looked suspicious. He was standing too close to her.

When Sarah brushed past him, the man’s…

I don’t know how it started. But somewhere along the way people started sending me angel stories. So I started sharing them. Which only meant that I began getting more stories.

Currently, I still receive bundles of angel stories in the forms of messages, emails, and letters. As we speak, the spiders living in my USPS mailbox are getting squashed by angel stories that keep arriving.

Truthfully, I didn’t set out to be a writer of angels. In fact, I wanted to be a humorist. I began my career telling funny stories, trying very hard to make the occasional reader pee themselves.

But if there is one thing I’ve learned in my life, it’s this: You must go where the angels take you.

Which brings me to my story. I was in a bookstore recently when I saw two Latina women shopping. They were in the same section I was in. In fact, they were looking at the same book I was looking at. The book was about angels, and it happened to be

in my hands.

I was thumbing through the pages when I noticed two five-foot women breathing down my collar.

Finally, the younger woman asked if I was going to purchase the book. I said, yes, I planned on it. Then I asked why she wanted to know.

“Because,” she said. “My mama wants this book. She is using it for research.”

Research? This got my curiosity piqued. I am a writer, and it is my job to get piqued. Sometimes I get piqued three or four times each day. It just relaxes me.

I asked what exactly the old woman was researching.

The old woman spoke in a booming voice not unlike the voice of Vincent Price from the 1953 film “House of Wax.”

“Los Ángeles,” the old woman said.

Then the elderly woman went on to tell me her tale. She spoke in Spanish and…

It was the night after Christmas, and Birmingham was quiet. I was on a walk through a neighborhood, watching street lights wink on at dusk.

The sunset was neon pink. There were sirens in the far-off. A distant train sounded its horn; two long, one short.

There were people walking dogs, old ladies watering ferns, and children riding scooters. And there were six kids playing a game of Wiffle Ball in their backyard.

“Heybatterbatterbatter…!” shouted the sweaty kids in the infield, punching their little hands.

“Swingbatterbatter…!”

The boy at the plate golfed one into right with his plastic bat.

“Throw him out!” shouted someone’s mom.

The throw was good.

“YOU’RE OUT!” shouted six kids in ecstatic unison.

The runner made the long walk of shame back to his mom’s lap and cried tears of sportsmanship.

Funny thing about Wiffle Balls. Not long ago, the State of New York declared that Wiffle ball, along with kickball and freeze tag, posed a “significant risk of injury” to kids. New York legislature decreed that any summer camp that included these activities

would be subject to government regulation.

Meanwhile, back at Wiffle Ball Inc. headquarters in Shelton, Connecticut, Wiffle employees probably thought this legislation was a prank.

Wiffle Ball dangerous? Wiffle Ball Inc. has been around for over half a century and has never—not once—been sued over safety issues. They have doled out over 60 million plastic balls since they opened their doors. There are Wiffle Balls on nearly every continent.

So people across the U.S. were ticked off about New York’s decision. They were vocal about it, too. They made a big stink, and they won. New York legislature finally removed Wiffle Ball from its list of regulated high-risk activities along with other allegedly dangerous sports like dodgeball, knitting, and Algebra II.

Anyway, as I walked past the kids playing Wiffle Ball, a stray plastic ball rolled onto the sidewalk and stopped only…

It was just the two of us, seated at dinner. Alone on Christmas night. Dressed in our Sunday best. Candles on the dining table. Choral music playing.

“This is weird,” said my wife, slicing her turkey. “Not having Mother with us.”

“I know.”

“I keep waiting for her to call me on the phone. I keep waiting to wake up one morning and figure out it was all a bad dream, and that she never really died.”

“Yeah.”

Long silence.

“Is this turkey too dry?” she said.

“Are you kidding? This turkey is so good it’s got an R rating.”

“How about the gravy?”

“I could water ski on this gravy.”

“You like the dressing?”

“I want to use this dressing in the shower.”

She smiled. “Do you recognize the plates that we’re eating off of?”

My wife lifted a dish. It had a simple green Christmas tree painted on it.

“These are your mama’s plates?” I said.

She nodded. “We ate on them every Christmas.” Then she inspected the plate and her eyes began to turn pink.

“And,” she said, “do you notice anything about this blouse I’m wearing?”

“Your mom’s blouse.”

Another nod. “Do you

like it?”

“I do.”

“This strand of pearls is hers, too.”

“Ah.”

“The perfume I’m wearing, can you smell it?”

“I can. Was that your mother’s, too?”

“Yes. Do you like this perfume? Is it weird that I’m wearing an old woman’s perfume at Christmas?”

“I adore that smell. And there’s no such thing as an old woman’s perfume.”

She covered her mouth. Her head dropped. Her hair fell into her plate. She dropped her fork and her knife, and there was the light sound of sobbing. I stood and went to my wife. I wrapped my arms around her.

“She’s gone,” moaned my wife. “Why can’t I seem to feel that? Why do I keep thinking she’s still here?”

“I don’t know.”

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and the fifth floor of the hospital was quiet. Not a creature was stirring, not even a registered nurse.

The pediatric oncology wing is not always as quiet as it is right now. After all, this is where the miniature party animals of the medical world reside. This department is typically a noisy, active, bustling place.

Usually, there are loud cartoons blaring from laptops, or the occasional video game blasting from an open door at a volume loud enough to shatter industrial porcelain.

This holiday season, however, there hasn’t been much noise on the fifth floor.

Recently, the hospital tightened its visitor policies in hopes of reducing the spread of the virus. Family members, except for Mom and Dad, are asked not to visit. Thus, kids are isolated. And this place has been painfully tranquil without visitors.

But tonight as you read these words, there are actually visitors on the fifth floor.

Special visitors. These visitors have traveled thousands of miles from the uppermost parts of the northern hemisphere. The visitors wear

long stocking caps, candy-striped leggings, and pointy plastic ears purchased directly from Party City.

“We’re not nurses,” says one elf named Sharon. “We’re legit elves.”

“She’s right,” says another elf who bears a striking resemblance to a sixty-year-old LPN named Wanda. “I’m from the North Pole.”

The elves push a large laundry cart through the hallway. The cart is loaded with an Everest of packages wrapped in bright paper and ribbons.

These elves have been gathering presents all month from patients’ families who were unable to visit. Sometimes elves drove across town on their off-days to collect gifts from patients’ loved ones.

“We had to get creative,” remarked one elf. “It took a lot of work, but we don’t mind, we’re Santa’s frontlines.”

The first room the elves enter tonight belongs to a nine-year-old girl. The girl is gently snoring. The girl’s mother…