It was both very dark and very cold at 4:15 this morning when I was inspired by a young black father in line at Walmart.

Waiting for the checker, I remarked “Sick kid?” He said “Yeah, all night,” as he laid out a small pharmacy on the check stand. We talked about the pain of a parent when kids hurt and he shared she’d been sick most of this week and how being a single father it was difficult to leave her home while he was at work ten miles away.

The checker arrived. He paid and we shook hands, both desperately wanting a speedy recovery for his little girl. My purchase made, I walked out into the dark, cold morning to see him fidgeting with an old bicycle to remove the lock. Turns out, he lived four miles up Boulder Highway and didn’t relish the ride home or the couple hours ahead for a nap before riding that same rickety bike across town to his job.

After much insistence on my part, we packed up his bike and drove the distance, pulling into the drive of a small trailer where he and his six year old lived. I wished him well and he said thanks. Nothing more needed said. It was just the chance meeting of two fathers who will never meet again, but who love their kids so much, it hurts, and an inspiring way to begin both our days.

He’s a real life hero.
Kayla, get well soon. Your dad loves you a whole lot.

I’m liking not stinking
And each hour thinking
I need to step out for a bit.
I’m liking not flaming
Coming in feeling shaming
I’m really too smart for this sh*t.

You’ve been there a hundred times before.
Good food, good service, good price. So you’re back for breakfast. You order, wait, make some conversation, then watch a table of eight loud, self-centered, drunk leftovers from last night walk out on your waiter because they simply changed their minds after ordering and because they are assholes.
It’s busy and you can tell he’s been busting his butt as he walks out to serve two huge trays of ordered meals to another suddenly vacated table. It’s been a long night and at the end of his shift, this is a tough pill for him to swallow.
Empathy.
What’s it like to be him right now?
Still waiting for your own meal to be served, you call him over and ask if he might wrap up a few of those unserved sandwiches for you to buy and take for lunch this week. It’s just enough goodwill and at the right moment to lift him out of a momentary pit which, at 5am, is working overtime to reinforce the belief that nobody cares about him.
Your offer engages him for a minute or so to talk about the rough night and the demanding crowd who care nothing about what it’s like to be him, only how fast they can get their food and which excuse they’ll use to stiff him on the tip. But he’s off shift shortly and because you were different…because you empathized and showed you cared at the right time…he heads home on a slightly more positive note with a renewed belief.
And a small piece of humanity is redeemed at a cost to you of just $27 plus 20%. And it’s totally worth it.
You say your goodbyes and head to work. And though yours is already in the office fridge, your coworkers thank you for catering today’s lunch.
Especially your underpaid, overworked receptionist with three kids who’s been doing without all week until payday.
And though it’s just beginning, today could easily be the start of the best day of my life.

I wish I’d planned better, worked harder, took the other job, done that and not this. I wish I’d had someone to tell me what today would be like. I wish I hadn’t called in sick, took that fall, been more careful at certain things and more careless at others. I wish I’d been able to see the world, see my grandchildren, see my lover one last time. I wish I’d stayed in the game, away from those of some people and closer to those of others. I wish I’d lived when I had the chance and taken the chances that made me feel alive when I had them to spend. I wish I could go back in time to take the road less traveled more or just traveled more often. I wish I had more wishes that came true and that I’d been truer to myself. I wish I’d given more instead of giving in. I wish it wasn’t all over when I still have beginnings left. I wish I’d dwelt on cliffs instead of in the valleys, in the nows instead of in the maybes and I wish I’d been more aware. I wish it wasn’t so quiet and dark and moist and blurry. And I wish it wasn’t so red.
And I wish I’d kept my eyes on the road
instead of my phone,
and had more time for a better final wish than that.

Outgoing holiday message set, decorations down, packed and stored for another year, tonight I flipped the switch and twisted my key to its final click of the year on the office door, marking the end of a job well done and more than a wish granted.

Arms loaded with lingering projects for my week off between the holidays, I paused to look back at that same door, reflecting in the darkness of the evening, and I had myself a nostalgic cry.

Thousands came through that portal this year seeking help, looking for a home, food, safety, hope, a respite from the circumstances of a very difficult year none of them ever expected, and most of all, a second chance.  2016 will be remembered by most as a rough year that didn’t grant many second chances, wishes or do-overs.  But we did.  It marked the start of our 25^th year of service to the neediest of our community, having entered as the top nonprofit of Southern Nevada — a couple proud achievements, but by no means our greatest.

As staff cleaned up the office for our post-holiday return, what captured my heart were the private conversations I overheard among small couplings of our frazzled dozen recalling stories from the year about this woman, that family, a senior citizen, that man and his child and the difference they hoped they’d made to ease their year’s burdens.

More than a few hugs and tears punctuated today. Consensus was that we each believe we are called to be doing these right things with our lives.  We might be able to earn more elsewhere if it was just work.  But it’s not.  No other job pays the lasting emotional dividends we earn right here.

I emptied my arms into the back seat of my car and closed the door. Strapped in and backing out to go make my own holidays with my family until the new year, I made a final glance at the door through my tears.  But my glance was diverted upwards to a light overhead and centered above the rooftop in the night sky.

The first and brightest evening star.

It was the best drive home, on a silent night, and a year of Christmas wishes granted.

Surely, I’m not the only one.

For most of my life, things have always seemed secure and generally routine.  The world’s tragedies were things delivered to my doorstep once a day by the 5am paperboy. More detailed news was something I voluntarily walked to the TV to turn on. There were no remotes. Tragic news didn’t wake me from my sleep via smartphone and even later when I could afford a computer, it didn’t erupt onscreen with images of devastation, tragedy and world corruption without my search or consent.  Fewer and fewer remember those days not so long ago when the world at least seemed more stable and predictable.

It happened again yesterday, twice.

Maybe it was since 9/11 or even a little before, but that seems a good marker for when the world as I knew it changed. The reality that my country, town and family were no longer shielded from the unpredictable became the new order of thinking. Then all the mass shootings, the waves of home invasions, news of meteoric threats to our planet, notifications of natural disasters within seconds of happening and acts of sheer terrorism were suddenly off the charts, occurring in places nearby we all thought were surely off limits.

I was driving home yesterday when the second moment hit.

Same as the first, there was nothing particularly different.  In traffic, music low and about three miles from putting my feet up after a long but productive day at work, it was quick, fleeting and uninvited.  That CVS there could suddenly blow up.  What if North Korea got a hand up this time and one was incoming, destined for the valley in front of me in ten…nine…eight…?  That guy in my parking lot looks suspicious, perhaps lying in wait to gun me down and take my car and my future.  I even shot a glance to the sky when the reflection of a plane-that-might explode mid-air caught my eye. Where are my kids right now?  Did I tell them I love them when we talked last? Crazy invasive flashes of tragedy to paralyze me for a brief instant as I turned down the radio and cracked open my window in hopes they’ll evacuate my mind and fly out.

But I’m not crazy, and surely, I’m not the only one.

Each time, the moment passes. I relax back to finish the drive home and wonder. This is America, but not the same America I used to feel confident affording me the protections against these kinds of threats that must happen a hundred times more often to those in third world countries and nations like Syria and less stable others of the middle east where driving home from work is a daily unpredictable fear and arriving home could easily find it and your family obliterated by tragedy created by evil men with guns and bombs and ideologies.  It’s hard to imagine what a daily reality like that might be like.  Crazy, but I think I’m starting to.

I’m not the fearful type.  My time to go will be my time and I know where I will land afterward.  But the encroachment of evil is happening more rapidly than any time before, a record pace in our American history, and to date, my crazy little moments of doom-wondering  pass, but for how much longer?

Odds are, there will come the day when what I’ve only imagined walks right up to the door of my own home or the corner CVS and knocks or opens fire on my secure little mind, and surely, I will not be the only one left wondering if I was actually crazier to believe otherwise.

Though I try my best to remember

the months and years I can never forget,

every time it’s the month of September,

I most often remember regret.

Regret for the times I was never…

Regret for the times I was lost…

Regret for my lack of endeavor…

Regret for all that it cost.

But regrets now take no lead,

because from them I’ve been freed.

Regrets bring strife, but remembering brings life;

An incredible distinction, indeed.

September fourth it was over,

Now it’s September fourth of nineteen,

eight wonderful years I’ve been sober,

eight sobering years I’ve been clean.

But I’ll always remember September

and thank God I survived to regret

the lost years I’m alive to remember

And the best still ahead of me yet.

If I’ve learned one thing, haters are gonna hate if it’s the last thing they do. Fortunately and sometimes, it is.

The best thing about having a dark, sordid past, is having a public dark, sordid past. For those who know me and many who don’t, if there’s one thing for certain, I’m pretty transparent. It took handcuffs of course, but since then, my past is so widely known and told in so many of my own and others’ stories, it’s pretty much old hat and inconsequential anymore. My stories themselves however, have helped free many who’d held themselves captive to their own.

Today, he leaves on the trip of a lifetime, and I don’t expect he will return in one piece.

Going home for the first time in 40 years rarely returns the same person.

Things change. People change. Stories change. And his youthful life on a now abandoned small town Colorado farm, is liable to answer many questions he would rather not. But it’s time to grow up. And he is driven.