I promised myself I wouldn’t cry. She was waiting for me. In the theater lobby. After the show. The little girl was with her family, smiling.

Theater goers were filing out of the auditorium, trying to forget the one-man shipwreck they had just witnessed onstage.

I exited stage left to go shake some hands in the lobby and apologize. And there she was.

You couldn’t miss her. An elementary-school-age kid. Big smile. Flaxen hair. Bright eyes. Holding a brightly colored poster board sign which read “I AM THE MEMPHIS BELLE.” With little hearts drawn on the sign.

“This is Luxe,” her father said by way of introduction.

That name.

I couldn’t place it at first. Luxe? Do I know a Luxe? Have I ever met a Luxe? And more importantly, do I owe Luxe money?

“Hello, Luxe,” I said.

“Hi,” came the quiet reply.

“How are you?” I said.

Then, without preamble, she hugged me. Her little arms squeezed me tightly, like she’d known me her entire life. She was about as big as a minute. Dressed up in a fancy jumper, ready

for a night on the town.

“Don’t you remember me?” she asked, mid-hug.

And something clicked in my brain. I recognized the girl immediately. I felt hot tears threaten to fill my eyes. But as I say, I promised myself to remain composed.

I wrote about Luxe Trivett. It must’ve been, what, two years ago. Maybe more. I don’t know. Time flies when you’re an AARP card holder.

No, I’m kidding. I’m not an AARP member. But I might as well be, because standing next to this fresh-faced child made me feel like the late Walter Brennan.

She was 9 years old when I wrote a column about her. She was at an outpatient residence at Saint Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital, recovering from her second bone marrow transplant for aplastic anemia.

Things weren’t looking good for Luxe.…

The call came late afternoon.

“May I speak to Sean?” said the child’s voice.

Speaking, I said.

“Is this a bad time, Mister Sean?”

Not at all. And don’t call me ‘Mister,’ it’s weird.

“What’re you doing right now, Mister Sean?”

Me? Right now? Actually, I was just trying to figure out what to write about.

“How’s it coming? The writing?”

It’s not.

“You mean you have writer’s block?”

No. I mean I am having an existential crisis, I’ve been staring at a blank screen for several hours, but nothing's happening, so I’ve decided to move to coastal Canada, change my name, and take up professional lobster fishing.

“So you can’t find anything to write about?”

That is correct.

“Well, that’s kinda why I was calling, actually. My mom reads your stories to me every night before bed.”

I’m sorry to hear that. Please don’t blame me for your mother’s terrible taste in literature.

“No, I like your writing.”

In that case, please don’t blame me for YOUR bad taste in literature.

“Last night, my mom read me your latest story.”

Really?

“Yep. And I was like, ‘Mom, how can I meet Sean? I’ve got to meet him somehow.’ And she was

like, ‘Well, let me see if I can’t get in touch with him.’ And so she did.”

So how did she find me? How’d she get this number I mean?

“My mom knows everyone. She is friends with your wife's cousin’s pet-sitter’s daughter’s roommate’s boyfriend’s aunt’s dad.”

How about that.

“So anyway, I’m calling you from the hospital right now, so I’m sorry if there is a lot of background noise.”

The hospital?

“Yes. It’s busy here. The nurses come in and out of this room all the time. I never have a moment to myself. You pretty much learn to live with them.”

Which hospital are you in, if you don’t mind my asking?

“I am in…

ABINGDON, Va.—The morning started off with rain and cool weather. This was followed by oppressive sunshine; the kind of heat that causes one to recall a Sunday school tale involving three Hebrew children.

“Is the weather always this unpredictable?” I asked an older lady on the sidewalk.

“Welcome to Virginny,” she said.

Her accent was more Tennessee than Virginny. Her hair was white. She wore a pink visor, Velcro shoes, and was eating an ice cream cone.

“Everybody always cusses the weather,” she said, licking her cone, “but nobody ever does anything about it.”

Abingdon is 15 miles from the Tennessee border. Nestled in the Appalachian Mountains. The lady has lived here all her life. I know this because she told me all about herself as ice cream dripped all over her shirt.

“Your ice cream is dripping on your chest,” I pointed out.

“Why are you looking at my chest?” she said, taking another lick.

We stood on Main Street. It was like entering the 1920s. Brick sidewalks. Old street lights. Antique houses. Hanging

ferns. Church spires.

There are no chain restaurants on Main, everything is independently owned. In a way, it is almost jarring to see no Hardee’s. No Starbucks. No Dunkin’.

“We have more restaurants per capita than New York, San Francisco, or New Orleans,” the lady said. “We are proud of that.”

Abingdon doesn’t have many capita. About 8,000 live here. So it only took 34 restaurants to earn this culinary distinction. But still.

“We’ve worked so hard to keep this town frozen in time. We have a lot of people who move here because Abingdon is the way our country used to be.”

Her shirt now looked like a fresh Jackson Pollock painting.

The town does look and feel like a snapshot of Americana. The way all small towns once were before Walmart came onto the scene. In this city, one gets the feeling that…

Cleveland, Tennessee. My wife and I are eating at a Chinese restaurant. We’ve been driving for a few hours. We pulled over in Cleveland to refuel and address pressing bladder issues. And we found this place.

The waitress asked what we wanted. We ordered a seaweed salad. This particular salad, however, was colored Legoland green and tasted like eating bait. I did not grow up eating seaweed salad.

My wife took a bite and said, “Remember when we first got married?”

“Vaguely,” I said.

“Remember when we used to get takeout from that Chinese place over by the Kmart?”

“Yes.”

“Remember how we’d always get the seaweed salad with the little thingies on it?”

“I do.”

She took a bite. Green earthworms hung from the corners of her mouth. “What do you CALL those thingies?”

“I don’t. Mainly, I just try to forget them.”

She smiled. She took another bite and I remembered a couple younger kids who used to eat Chinese food a lot.

Me with my long hair. Her with her bangs. We were poor. We had

one window unit A/C in our apartment, which only worked on days of the week beginning with L. Our idea of a big night out was eating Chinese.

The Chinese restaurant in our hometown was cheap. Duct tape on the cushions. There weren’t many places to go for dates. So that’s where we went. Plus, this place had a dart board.

Jamie was good at darts. Very good, in fact. Although, during one Iron Bowl, a dart landed in a very sensitive location of my body. Which leads me to suspect foul play.

But the food at the old Chinese restaurant was stellar. And food has always been so important to the woman I married. Some people eat to live. Jamie lives to eat.

I met her after she graduated culinary school. She wore chef’s whites for a living. She bossed…

You’re going to be okay. That’s not an opinion. It’s not a guess. This isn’t some trite little catchphrase from some crappy motivational book that reads like it was written by a greasy televangelist.

You’re going to be okay. It’s the plain truth. You really are going to make it through this junk you’re going through.

So relax. You don’t have to do anything to make everything okay. You don’t have to close your eyes extra tight, grit your teeth, use magic words, or clap for Tinkerbell.

Yes, things are bad. But you have a little, infinitesimal voice speaking to you right now. And this voice is reading these very words alongside you and saying to you, “This guy’s got a point.”

This is not your voice. It’s a voice that comes from somewhere else. The problem is, you can’t always hear this faint voice talking. Namely, because you’re too busy freaking out.

“You’ll be okay,” the gentle voice will say again. “It’s all going to be okay. You’ll see.”

But you are afraid to trust this voice.

Also, the voice says other things like: “You’re not fat. You’re

not stupid. You’re a smart person. You’re good enough. You’re very fortunate. You’re a miracle. Everyone really likes you, with the possible exception of your mother-in-law.”

So I know you’re sitting there, wondering why you’re still reading this drivel, when I obviously know nothing about you.

But you’re also thinking about how you’ve had a hard last few weeks. Last few months. Last few years. Last few decades.

You’re thinking about how often you pray for relief but it never comes. You’re thinking about how you have tried to put one foot in front of the other, but now it’s getting harder to move your legs. You want to give up.

Meantime, the little voice is practically screaming. The voice says: “Don’t quit! You’re almost there!”

Someday—I know you can’t envision…

I let him help me out to my truck. He was a supermarket bag boy. Maybe 19. Nice kid. Reddish hair. Warm smile. He spoke with a significant speech impediment.

I could not understand what he was saying, per the impediment. The cashiers had decided, apparently, to ignore him. This had to be embarrassing, but it never stopped the kid from trying.

After he bagged my groceries, I could faintly understand him say: “Do you need help out to your car?”

As it happens, I DID need help with my groceries. Namely, because a few days ago, I went tubing on the lake with my goddaughter. For those of you who don’t know what “tubing” is, this is a full-contact water activity not meant for middle-aged men with extremely high copays.

Tubing is when you ride on an inflatable tube attached to a speedboat by a ski rope.

My goddaughter had a marvelous time tubing. So did I. Until I dismounted. Whereupon I flew off the tube at high speed and “slightly” bruised my ribs.

At least that’s how the doctor put it.

“You will experience slight discomfort,” the doc said with a slight smirk.

Sleeping on my on my side has been “slightly” fun. Sneezing sends you into the Fifth Circle of Hell. Pushing a heavy shopping buggy becomes an extreme sport.

So I replied to the bagger, “A little help out to my car would be nice.”

The boy pushed my cart through the parking lot. It was a hot day in Alabama. The boy unloaded my heavy bags, sweating through his clothing, and he was talking up a blue streak.

I felt bad because I couldn’t figure out what the boy was saying, I had to keep asking him to repeat himself.

Finally the boy used all his fortitude to say the following sentence: “I know you can’t understand me, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” I said.…

Dallas. The mid-1980s. There were three Mexican boys in the supermarket. The meat department. They were covered in sawdust and drywall mud. They were eyeing the beef, looking for the cheapest cuts. Counting their nickels and dimes.

But they came up short. They were about to walk away when the butcher came from behind the counter and handed them 25 pounds of ground beef.

That’s a lot of meat.

“The expiration dates are technically past due,” said the butcher, “but this is still perfectly good meat if you freeze it. And it’s just going to go to waste if you don’t take it.”

“How much do we owe you?” asked one of the boys.

“Nothing,” said the butcher. “On the house.”

The three young men looked at each other. No words were said. One of the boys started crying.

“God bless joo,” was their response.

“God bless j’all too,” said the Texan butcher.

Rural Kansas. The man was walking his dog in the neighborhood when it happened. A car wreck took place in front of him. On the street. The

Ford Contour plowed into a telephone pole. Nose first. Game over.

Soon, the vehicle was on fire. Someone inside the automobile was screaming.

“They were horrible screams,” the dog-walker remembers.

He didn’t know what to do, so he plunged into the burning car and dragged the driver from the inferno. There was a baby was in the back seat. He saved the infant, too.

Today, the baby is a grown woman who drives a truck for a living. A few months ago, that truck driver visited a nursing home.

“You don’t know me,” she said, as she sidled up to the elderly man’s bedside. “But you saved my life when I was a baby in a burning car. I just wanted to thank you.”

The old man died last week. The truck driver told this same story at that man’s…

This house is a tomb. Ever since the kid left. We’ve had a kid here at the lake for the past several days. Our goddaughter. She left this morning.

There is evidence a child has been in this house, however. There is, for example, a giant rubber ball, sitting in the middle of our living room.

The ball is shaped like a giant peanut. It is called a “peanut sensory stability ball.” Basically, a child sits on this peanut and it’s ride’em cowboy.

Which is exactly what the kid would be doing if she were here right now. Bouncing on her peanut. Making happy conversation, probably while eating—I don’t know—a popsicle.

Either that, or she would be swimming in the lake right now. The child loves the lake. She adores the lake, actually.

Although the child I’m referring to is blind, and many people naturally assume she is afraid of water, the kid is not afraid. She is obsessed with water.

Over the last three days, the child has lived in lake water. Take yesterday. The

kid woke up at eight. She emerged from her bedroom, already wearing her swimwear and water shoes.

“Good morning!” she said in much the same way you might announce that you won the Florida Powerball jackpot.

“Good morning,” we replied in low-pitched morning voices, drinking coffee, trying to coax our middle-aged eyelids open.

The child ate a bowl of cereal while her aunt Jamie simultaneously slathered the squirming little-kid body with SPF 12,380 sunscreen.

Within seconds the child was in the lake water.

Which felt weird to me, swimming directly after eating breakfast. But then, I was raised by old-school parenting. I was brought up to believe that you were not supposed to swim after eating. When I was a kid, after we ate a Snickers, our mothers forced us to wait at least two or three presidential administrations.

But apparently this is just…

I receive a lot of mail in the form of emails, letters, private messages, texts, Morse code, etc. It is impossible to answer all these messages, so I compiled some commonly asked questions:

Q: This world is a mess, why don’t you ever address the central problems of our society? It seems irresponsible to not cultivate awareness. Why are you pretending that humanity is one great big happy family, and everything is hunky dory? This isn’t helping our country.

A: I think someone needs a nap.

Q: No, I’m serious. Don’t gloss over the question with your glib, sophomoric attempt at ill-timed humor.

A: You could use a beer, too.

Q: Hi. I just want to know: Is Sean Dietrich a real person, or just a secret team of a bunch of wannabe writers pretending to be one guy?

A: We aren’t wannabes. We’re never-weres. Big difference.

Q: Ginger or Mary Ann?

A: Lucille Ball.

Q: Come on. That’s not fair. Please comment on this age-old debate.

A: It’s not a debate. Not really. Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s

Island,” former Miss Nevada 1960, received more fan mail than Tina Louise (Ginger) and nearly every other actor at CBS Studios combined.

Even after Wells’ heyday she still received some 5,000 fan letters per week from hormone crazed post-pubescent boys, most of whom were offering to bear her children. Not that I would know.

Q: You write a lot about dogs, but why don’t you ever write about cats? Don’t you like cats?

A: As I type this, I am currently on my porch surrounded by six neighborhood cats. Two are sleeping near my feet. One is beside me, communicating telepathically with her giant, yellow, frightening, apathetic eyes.

Q: So why don’t you ever write about cats?

A: I just did.

Q: I am a writer, trying to establish a daily writing routine, I was wondering how often…

Sunrise on Lake Martin. I’m usually the first one awake. I rarely have any company in the mornings. I wake up with the chickens. Most mornings, I sit on my porch alone. Just me and the feral cats.

This morning, however, I had company.

I heard small feet walking onto the screened porch, overlooking the lake. I turned to see a child with messy hair, staggering toward me. A 12-year-old girl in pajamas.

She used her hands to feel her way through the maze of patio furniture. She walks like this, feeling her way around, even when it’s daylight.

My goddaughter sat beside me on the sofa. She sort of crawled into my lap, head resting against my chest.

“Morning,” she said with a yawn. Her breath smelled like a billy goat’s lower intestinal tract.

“Good morning, Dragon Breath,” I said.

She cupped her hand to her mouth and attempted to smell her own breath. Birds fell out of the trees.

I picked crust from her eyes. “You’re killing me,” I said.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“Sunrise,” I replied.

“Can you describe what it looks like?” She

curled against me snuggly.

I looked at the pink sky of morning. Daylight had taken hold of the world.

“You’ve seen one sunrise you’ve seen them all,” I said.

“Wish I could see it.”

I squeezed her. “I have an idea. How about you tell me what the sunrise sounds like.”

She yawned. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I want you to tell me how a blind person experiences a sunrise.”

Becca curled tighter against me. “You really want to know?”

“I do.”

“Well, you have to close your eyes.”

I did.

“No cheating,” she said.

“Scouts’ honor.”

“First,” she said, “I hear birds. But, I feel like when sighted people hear birds, they don’t think about all the DIFFERENT birds they’re actually hearing. They just hear one sound, birds.…