Category: Musings

By Sean Dietrich

When I was a kid, my mother believed in angels, but I didn’t. I was on the fence about angels. I didn’t believe in hocus pocus. My thought was, if angels were real, then why were they always the worst team in the Major Leagues?

My mother used to say, “When you get older, you will believe.”

“How can you be so sure?” I asked.

“Because, when you’re older there will be moments in your life when you cannot logically explain things without believing.”

Mothers.

But then I started writing. And almost immediately, I started receiving stories from people.

Like this one: The young woman was in her car. It was midnight. The two-lane highway was desolate.

Her Impala struck a deer. It wasn’t just a deer. It was an animal about the size of a subtropical continent. Her car spun. The automobile went into the opposite lane.

An oncoming vehicle struck her. She blacked out.

The next thing she remembers is a man helping her from the car. He lifted her out. He placed her against the guardrail. “You’re going to be okay,” he said.

When the paramedics found her, she was asking where the man went. “Ma’am,” the EMTs explained, “Nobody travels this highway at this time of night.”

That’s when she looked at what used to be her car. It was a pile of soot. If she would have been inside, she would have been permanently checked into the Horizontal Hilton.

And here’s another. The man worked at a commercial factory. He was overseeing huge production machines. And when one of the machines started acting up, one of his workers, a young woman, tried to fix the mechanical problem herself.

The employee had her arm inside the machine when one of the hydraulic levers pinned her arm inside the machine and was about to sever her limb.

The foreman was trying to help, so were the others, but they were incapable. That’s when a young man, dressed in jeans and T-shirt, showed up. Using his brute strength, the young man released the hydraulic arms and freed the woman.

“There was no way any human could have moved these hydraulic machines,” said the old foreman. “He would have had to be superhuman.”

When the woman was freed, she was in shock. They splashed cold water on her face. And when the employees looked for the woman’s hero, to thank him, nobody could find him.

Nobody knew who he was.

Wait. I’m not done.

There was a young woman of 12 who was swimming across the lake where her family lived. She was doing it on a dare. Her friends had dared her to swim more than a mile across the slough. When she reached the middle point, she began to get tired and couldn’t go on. Her swimming turned into dog paddling. Her dog paddling turned into drowning.

There was a man in a boat who arrived and dragged her into his skiff. He rowed her to shore. And when they found her, there was an empty boat on the shore that nobody recognized. There were no identifying registration numbers on the boat. No identifying characteristics. The man was nowhere to be found.

Today, the woman is 64 years old. Her family still owns and uses that boat.

I tell you all this because about 10 years ago, I finally broke down and wrote my first story about the supernatural. It was a story told to me by an old man who claimed an angel saved his life.

Within 24 hours, I had received more angel stories than I knew what to do with. The stories had been emailed to me from all parts. Even from far, faraway places like Indonesia, Chile, and Milwaukee.

Currently, I still receive dozens of angel stories per week. I have received them from every state in the Union, and most European countries. I have thousands in my possession. I share them from time to time, even though I have no business doing so—I’m not what you’d call an inspirational writer. I’m more of a Pabst Blue Ribbon enthusiast. Mostly, I share these stories because I don’t know what else to do with them.

So anyway, a few days ago, I shared another angel story. Whereupon my mother immediately called me and said, “I thought you didn’t believe in angels.”

Well. You know mothers. They just love to rub it in.

By Sean Dietrich

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. But if you listen you can hear millions of sounds.”

I listened. We counted 28 different bird calls.

“What else do you hear?” My eyes were still closed.

“I hear screechy things,” she said. “Crickets, maybe. Some high-pitched, some low, some go real fast, some go slow. And I hear the water.”

“I don’t hear any water.”

“You have to listen,” she said in a groggy tone. “It’s a little slapping sound in the distance. Water everywhere.”

She was drifting off.

“And the wind,” she said lazily. “I hear the wind. A lot of people don’t think wind has a sound, but I feel like it does. Even when it’s not blowing hard, wind still makes a hiss in the trees, and if you actually listen, you can tell the wind is always around you, all the time, even when you can’t see it or feel it. The wind is always there.”

“Sort of like the IRS.”

She was breathing heavily, like she was falling into another world.

“Are your eyes still closed?” she said.

“Sí. What else do you hear?”

“I hear your heart beating,” she said in a sleepy voice. “Because my head is on your chest.”
“What does my heart sound like?”

But she was already gone. Lightly snoring. Tucked against me tightly.

Best sunrise I’ve ever heard.

By Sean Dietrich

Kansas City International Airport. I was standing in a long, LONG line, waiting to board my plane. We were like cattle, clogging up the chute. Nobody was happy.

Namely, because yesterday the whole world underwent a historic global internet outage, which delayed and canceled nearly 3,000 American flights. And on this particular historic day in human civilization, I happened to be flying.

You could see boiling anger and frustration on every face in the airport.

The young man in line ahead of me was with his mother. He was maybe 15. He had Down syndrome. He was shouting hellos to people in line. He was a natural comedian. He was Mister Personality.

And you couldn’t help but smile when the kid landed his miracle gaze on you.

“Hello!” the boy shouted to a businessman in line. “How are you today?!”

The business guy was on the phone, having a heated conversation at the time.

“Uh, I don’t know,” the guy says.

hen the boy hugged the man. “Does this help!?” he said.

The businessman tentatively hugged back. Until, finally, he broke a smile, ended up terminating the phone call, and he said to the boy, midhug, “I guess I’m good, how are you?”

“It’s not ‘good,’” the boy said. “You never say ‘I’m good,’ it’s bad grammar. It’s WELL. You should have told me, you’re doing WELL!”

Everyone laughed at that. All the people in line, in foul moods, some of whom had been living in KCI for the past 20 hours, surviving on vending machine food, actually began chuckling.

The businessman was laughing too, when he said, “Okay, then I am doing WELL, and how are you today?”

“I’m good,” the boy said.

More laughter.

Then the boy addressed another woman in line. She was playing on her phone. She was mid-forties. She looked like she’d just sucked a lemon.

“Hi,” the kid said.

She looked up from her phone.

“Um. Hi?” she replied.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

“Laura.”

“Can I give you a hug, Laura?”

Laura looked around. “Um. I don’t think so.”

He hugged her anyway. He even closed his eyes. Laura was taken off guard. She put her phone away and committed to the hug.

“You smell good,” the kid said.

“Thanks,” she said.

“What about me?” he said. “Do I smell good too?”

Laura looked around again. “Sure.”

This made her laugh. Which was exactly what the boy was aiming for, of course.

The kid approached several others in line. I watched people’s rancid attitudes fade, one by one. And I watched a few hundred delayed airline passengers start to smile.

When it was time to board the plane, the kid stepped back in line. His comedy routine was over. He was with his mom once again. He was quiet.

“That’s one remarkable boy,” I whispered to his mother.

She smiled.

“He has a gift,” she said. “He can make anyone smile. And I mean ANYONE.”

“He must inherit that gift from you?” I said.

She laughed. “Lord, no. His biological parents left him in a dumpster as a baby, behind a restaurant.” She used a pinky to dab away a tear. “I was just the one who was lucky enough to find him.”

Some folks get all the luck.

Sean Dietrich is a writer, humorist, novelist, and biscuit connoisseur, known for his commentary and stories on life in the American South.

By Sean Dietrich

A television is playing in a Birmingham bar. The talking head is shouting politics. Most folks in this joint are below thirty, and aren’t even watching TV. They’re transfixed with the opiate glows of their smartphones.

The bartender looks thirteen. He stares at the television screen and says something under his breath. Something sad.

“This country sucks, man.”

I know he probably doesn’t mean it. He’s just upset. But it stings just the same, and I wish he wouldn’t say such things.

Still, maybe it’s not his fault. I don’t know what his story is, I don’t know what his beliefs are, but perhaps this boy has missed a few uniquely American blessings in his accumulated years of harrowed wisdom.

Maybe if he could see a few wondrous things in this country he’d change his opinion about us.

Perhaps he’s never seen things like big, neon-pink azaleas bright enough to give you trouble breathing. Those don’t suck.

Neither do the Waffle Houses lining the interstates. The shoebox buildings with the canary-yellow tops and the interior globe lights over the faux-wood tables. Nothing sucks about those. I’ve neither had a bad meal at such an establishment, nor bad service. And no matter which season I visit a Waffle House, it is always cold enough inside to hang meat.

The Everglades at sunrise, no sucking there. The Suwannee River definitely doesn’t suck. The fat-bottomed cypress trees, swollen with bayou water. Spanish moss—which, as it turns out, is neither moss, nor Spanish.

My bartender needs to see these things. They would bless his heart.

If you ask me, the boy needs to ride a riverboat on the Mighty Missouri at dusk, watch the shrimp trawlers combing Lake Pontchartrain. Or listen to stories from the roughnecks who raised beef in Ottawa County, Oklahoma. He should meet the roughnecks who farmed the oyster beds of the Apalachicola Bay.

And he needs smoked ribs from Kendall’s Barbecue in Georgiana, Alabama. Food that comes out of that tin shack is worth crying over.

He needs to witness Charleston at sunrise. Yellowstone at sundown. He deserves the right to see the outerbanks of The Old North State.

What the kid needs is county fairs, livestock exhibitions, and children with prize-winning show hogs.

A porterhouse in Kansas City. The Copper Art Museum in Clarkdale, Arizona. A hot-air balloon flight over the Appalachians. A ballgame at Fenway. The little horserace they do each year at Churchill Downs.

String bands, playing beneath festival tents. Gospel music with Hammond organs. Music from the bayou played on button accordions by men with white hair.
Jazz.

The kid needs to hold a butter-yellow Case XX knife in his hand. And he ought to own at least one Stetson to keep the sun out of his eyes. He needs to taste chicken and dumplings prepared by a woman who has raised seven kids without the support of a husband.

He needs to meet the Walmart greeter named Phillip. The hospice chaplain named Marge. The family therapist named Jason. He deserves to meet the truck drivers, the pipefitters, the songwriters, the storytellers, the novelists, the oil painters, the shipbuilders, the dentists, the hair stylists, the brewmasters, and the small-town principals named Barbara.

I wish I could take this kid to a Church of God chapel in Senoia, Georgia. Or perhaps a Catholic Mass in Valentine, Nebraska. Or a synagogue in Yonkers. Or the Green Cove Missionary Baptist Church in Damascus, Virginia. Or the Thai temple in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

I wish I could take him to any church house that backs up to a hayfield. The quintessential American rural congregational house. The kinds of assemblies that pepper this country from Missoula to Uvalde.

And I’d like to carry the kid to an American funeral. Like my grandmother’s service. Wherein a string of a million-and-three cars drove with their headlights on. I’d like the boy to attend an honest-to-goodness repast, and eat the food of grieving people.

I’d like him to receive a hug from an elderly Norwegian woman in Minnesota. I’d like him to taste pierogies in Lancaster County. Chilaquiles verdes in Taos. Crab cakes in Baltimore.

I don’t care what the suits on television say, kid. Don’t believe them. Yes, we have problems in this nation. Yes, we have haters. Yes, we’re a gigantic dysfunctional family fit for an episode of Jerry Springer. Yes, we have division.

But we also have pediatric oncologists, Fort Bragg, national park rangers, historic sod cabins, longleaf forests, Pikes Peak and James Brown. The sandstone arches of Moab. The beach bungalows of O’ahu. The 960,000 acres of remaining American prairieland. We have nurses, EMTs, special-ed teachers, janitors, meat-packers, cab drivers and bartenders.

That’s us.

America doesn’t suck.

Your television does.

Sean Dietrich is a writer, humorist, novelist, and biscuit connoisseur, known for his commentary and stories on life in the American South.

By Sean Dietrich

I met her for coffee. She was middle-aged. Her hair was purple. On her arm was a tattoo which read “HOPE.”

Her story was simple. She was 14 and pregnant. The daughter of a rural preacher, in the mountains of North Alabama. She had never even cut her hair.

Hers was a tribe who wore long skirts, beat Bibles, and spoke in tongues. She was a good kid. But she made a mistake. A big one.

And they kicked her out.

The day the girl left her home, she walked out of her household carrying only a backpack.

She had no phone. No money. No nothing. She wore a Walmart maternity dress. Her mother snuck her $100 in cash.

The girl met her best friend’s sister in a Dollar General parking lot. Her friend’s sister was 19, waiting in an idling Toyota Camry. And away they went. That was the last time the girl saw her immediate family.

The girl had her baby in Tennessee. Her best friend was around for the birthing process. Her best friend held her hand and reminded her to breathe.

Our heroine got a job at a retail store. She had a crappy apartment with a window-unit A/C. She utilized free daycare. She used a cheap ride-sharing service to get to work.
In other words, she had nothing.

But her son was smart. One of the smartest, in fact. He was enrolled in programs for advanced students. Once upon a time, the school system would have called him gifted. But government funding decided that it wasn’t equitable to say some schoolkids were gifted/talented. This made parents mad.

Nevertheless, the gifted boy excelled in his studies. And as his mother continued to work double shifts in fast food joints, deep-frying ribbon-cut potatoes, her son studied into the wee hours.

He was dual enrolled. Which means that by the time he graduated high school, he had a college degree.

Then he garnered scholarships. He was accepted into medical school. By the time he was doing clinicals, his mother had worked her way up to shift manager.

Later, the boy got married. And he continued his medical education. His mom was still working full-time, gifting the happy young couple hundred-dollar bills whenever she had enough leftover cash.

And only a few weeks ago, the former 14-year-old mother went home for the first time in nearly three decades. She is in her mid-40s now. But still lovely. Still strong.

Her hair is dyed purple because that is the color of royalty. Her nose is pierced because she likes the way it looks.

She walked into her old church last Sunday. Her father is still preaching. She sang every song at the top of her voice. She listened to the sermon.

When service ended, her father refused to speak to her. Her siblings ignored her. But her mother met her in the parking lot. Her mother hugged her, and asked why her daughter came to church after all these years.

“Because,” our heroine replied. “I forgive you.”

Her mother said nothing.

“And,” our heroine added, “because I just wanted you to know that, as of last week, your grandson is a neurosurgeon.”

Then she walked away.

So anyway, now you know why she has that tattoo.