MY PERFECT COLUMN

Diana Griego Erwin graciously accepted me into her home at a time when the world seemed to be falling apart around her.

Her orange-and-black tabby cat eyed me suspiciously, with the look a feline gets when an intruder has entered her domain.

Griego Erwin had just resigned from her job as a columnist for the Sacramento Bee. Her offense: Making up cheesy stuff, presenting it as fact, and assuming her unsuspecting readers would swallow the swill, including highly descriptive interviews with people who, it turns out, existed only in her imagination.

"I was only trying to write the perfect column," Griego Erwin told me, her eyes damp as she diced an onion for the paella she was making.

"I know what you mean," I told her sympathetically. "Fortunately, most of my readers recognize the swill I serve is obviously made up."

At that moment, Griego Erwin's nephew arrived home from school.

"Good afternoon, Aunt Queenie," he said breezily, pulling off a sweater to expose his Ziggy Marley t-shirt. "Smells like paella."

The nephew, a sensitive boy with a lot to learn, noticed the tears in Griego Erwin's eyes. He walked over and embraced his aunt.

"That's okay," he said. "I still love you."

Griego Erwin pulled a tissue from her doily-wrapped Kleenex box and blew her nose. I recognized the gesture as that of a person who recognizes her career is headed down Hard Knocks Alley, by way of Alkali Flats.

"It's not that I'm a bad person," she told me. "I still volunteer at the Quadriplegic Veterans Homes. I still give money to the Sudanese Orphans Society."

She then grabbed a box of peas from the Kenmore Elite refrigerator-freezer in the kitchen. She had purchased the refrigerator only days before she resigned from the Bee.

"I knew I couldn't really afford such a nice refrigerator," she told me. "But my old one conked out and my nephew needs chilled food. I'm the only one left for him. And then I had to quit my job. I don't know how I'll make ends meet now."

At that moment, a quadriplegic veteran rolled into the kitchen with a Sudanese orphan on his lap. Erwin's cat rubbed up against the wheelchair happily.

"Thank you for buying this wheelchair," the veteran told Erwin.

"Thank you for finding me a home," the orphan said.

Griego Erwin sniffled and smiled, the smile that comes when a person recognizes that life still holds abundant surprises, even while her career is headed down Letdown Avenue, by way of Desolation Road.

"Wanna stay for paella?" she asked.

As the cornball tenderness unfolded in the kitchen, I was suddenly aware that Griego Erwin was providing me with a scenario from which I might write My Great Column.

Maudlin sentiment has always been huge in newspapers. Mining the continuing drama of life's rich pageantry is why columnists exist.

But something was missing. What I needed was the coup de grace, the one over-arching statement or action that would turn My Great Column into My Perfect Column.

The tension was building. And then Griego Erwin said something completely unexpected.

She glanced up from her simmering paella. It was the wistful glance of a person who recognizes she can help a fellow writer, even while her own career is headed down Hard Knocks Alley, by way of Bathos Boulevard.

"I just don't get it," she told me. "I don't understand why bad things happen to good people."

Perfect.