The heart of the tree
November 30, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 34 Comments
I’m a linear guy when it comes to decorating for Christmas. That means working from the outside in. Lights on the trees, garland on the porch banisters, wreathes on the windows, spotlights in the yard. When all that is done and right—and it always has to be right—we’ll move to the inside: nativities, candles, lights.
The tree comes last. Always has, too, even when I was a child. I think that’s as it should be. The manger is the soul of Christmas and the reason we celebrate our blessed assurance, but the tree is its heart. I firmly believe that. It is in most instances placed in the room in which we gather and spend our time together, whether living room or family room. We wrap them with lights that by some magic seem to cast a glow upon us that seems warmer than any sun and more comfortable than any blanket. We place stars or angels at the apex to remind us of what shone in that bright sky so many years ago as heralds of the Good News to all men.
But if the heart of Christmas is the tree, the heart of the tree is its ornaments.
It was only this year I realized that, and I have my children to thank for it. The tree had been set and straightened in its stand, the lights had been strung, and the star had been put up. Both kids were in the throes of the seasonal hyperactivity that seems to pour out of them once the Xs on the calendar creep toward December. But the constant torrent of that excitement began to ebb and flow once the box of ornaments was opened.
They quieted.
It was not the sort of silence that signifies boredom or joyless work. It was instead an almost holy stillness, the sort of which I would imagine accompanies some great discovery long buried by dirt and time.
They didn’t reach for the shiny baubles purchased on sale at Target, not even the Star Wars or Winnie the Pooh ornaments from the Hallmark store. What my kids reached for were the treasures wrapped in paper towels and tissues that had over the last eleven months slipped through the cracks to the bottom of the box. The ones that cost nothing but time and effort. The ones they made themselves.
Chances are you have the same sort of thing on your own trees. The house made out of a school milk carton. The reindeer made out of clothespins. A bell made out of a Styrofoam cup.
They sorted these ornaments into their own separate pile. Only after they were secure (and only after repeated pleas by both of them for me not to sit on them) did they reach for the fancier accessories. They tied bows and plugged in the mechanical ornaments. My daughter hung the colored bulbs by rainbow order. It was all lively and punctuated by jokes and cheer—the flow. But every few trips to the tree would be to hang one of their own ornaments onto the tree, ones made in kindergarten or pre-school or even last year. Those trips would be made in that awed silence–the ebb.
I didn’t ask my children why they acted such. I wasn’t sure if they knew, and I wasn’t about to spoil their unknowing. They’ll learn that soon enough.
In a few short years what my children see as the magic of Christmas will yield to a new understanding. They will know that Santa isn’t real, but that their memories are. They can see them each year as they hang them on the tree and all their outward talk turns to talk directed inward. They’ll remember where they were when they made them, whom they were with, what they were feeling. They will glimmer in the sun during the day and in the bright lights during the evening. They will look and they will remember.
Maybe that’s where all the warmth of a Christmas tree comes from. Not from the lights, but the thoughts.
That’s what I think now. Christmas is a time where memories are made tangible and we glimpse the thin line of life that connects our yesterdays and tomorrows, all wrapped up in milk cartons and pipe cleaners.
They’re fragile, like us.
Precious, like us.
This post is part of the 2010 Virtual Advent Tour. For more holiday stories, please visit them at the Virtual Advent Tour blog.
Stemming the tide
November 28, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 2 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
My sixteenth Thanksgiving
November 25, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 16 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
My sixteenth Thanksgiving meal was the first one eaten without my family present. Also my last. Because I learned my lesson.
My girlfriend’s family was planning the mother of all Thanksgiving feasts. Everything was to be meticulously planned and prepared by the family matriarch, a hard-looking woman who chain smoked Marlboro 100s but did so with a whiff of proper daintiness that harkened back to her ancient Virginian roots.
Meals would be served in four courses and include fancy table settings, crystal glasses, and food I couldn’t pronounce. Relatives far and wide were more summoned than invited. A new dining room table was purchased just to accommodate the thirty or so people. “It’s going to be quite the soiree,” my girlfriend said. “Can you come?”
Yes.
For two reasons. One was that I was her boyfriend and so had boyfriend obligations. Second was that her family was what I referred to as Important People. Successful and powerful and rich. They drove BMWs and wore J. Crew and ruminated over the stock market. They were, in essence, both everything my own family was not and everything I wanted to become.
I had no reservations about going because I wasn’t likely to miss anything of real substance at home. They Coffey version of Thanksgiving celebration involved little more than a turkey, some stuffing, and my own relatives gathered around a simple pine table. People who drove trucks and wore Wal-Mart and talked about hunting. Not that there was anything wrong with that. There wasn’t. I just thought that maybe it was time I broadened my horizons and saw how the other half lived.
So I went. And my girlfriend was right, it was quite the swanky affair. Fancy people arriving in fancy cars to eat fancy food. You would think all of that would translate into a fancy time. But then again, some things get lost in translation.
For one, I soon learned that all the wealth and power my girlfriend’s family had accumulated resulted in some bad feelings. Some were jealous of others, others were angry at some, and it seemed all of them had something against somebody. The meal, tastefully prepared, was given without prayer. And the table that was bought specifically to bring so many people together didn’t. Squabbles broke out. Arrogance was displayed. Pettiness was front and center. And before long my girlfriend’s mother, the properly dainty matriarch, jumped up from her seat and ran like a mad woman for her smokes, screaming through her tears that she “should have never done this!”
I sat there, lost in wonder at the sight. Here were people who had worked hard and labored much to enjoy the fruits of success, only to find that they had lost one another and a bit of perspective in the process. Far from being one of the family, I had been relegated to mere spectator. Which was fine with me. Those people were nuts.
My girlfriend had become accustomed to the shouts and accusations. She leaned over just as her mother slammed the front door and said, “Life’s a beach, huh?”
She said that often. And it seemed to me as though her family had lived up to that philosophy. They had all staked their claim on the shoreline and built their castles, marveled and worshipped them even, and then forgot that it was all sand in the end.
The good life didn’t look so good to me. If that was having it all, then I’d rather keep my nothing. So I did the only thing I could. I left. Quietly and politely.
I went back home, back to the plain food served on the plain kitchen table to my plain relatives. Back to a place where the bonds of God and family held true not merely for one day a year, but all of them. And you know, that wasn’t just the best Thanksgiving meal I’d ever had, it was also the best Thanksgiving period.
Because that was when I learned I shouldn’t just be thankful for what I had, but for what I didn’t.
The wild animal
November 23, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 13 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
(written after the Horrorfest known as the evening news convinced me to take a walk through the woods)
I saw it from atop a small hill where the woods thinned and the river hooked into a lazy L. Just standing there, staring out over the water as if pondering where it had all come from and where it was all going.
It’s presence was not shocking but still unexpected. They’re hard to spot this time of year. The colder months drive them into their dens to sleep and grow fat, turning the forests a bit safer in their absence. There’s less need to cast a backward glance for fear of what may be lurking. And glance you should. The woods are no place to be lost in thought when they’re about. Those creatures are sneaky for their size. Quick. Not there one moment but on you the next, tearing into your flesh without even the courtesy of a “May I?”
I’d seen wild animals in the woods before. Both the tiny ones that cause no harm and the big ones who will gladly do so. This one was big. Bigger than most. It’s coat was heavy and brown and it’s paws left deep marks in the soggy dirt. Even from that distance, it was intimidating. A pang of fear shuddered through me. If it decided to look away from the river and toward me, that small moment of decision would be crucial. Staying put would be a risk. Running would be worse. Everyone knew that running often led to chasing and chasing often led to being caught.
But in the end I decided to stay. Partly because I was afraid of that chase, but mostly because I thought I was hidden well enough. Watching a beast—and make no mistake, this was a beast—is an enthralling experience. We’re all curious creatures, eager to glimpse into the unknown as long as the chances of it glancing back are slim.
It turned and ambled down the riverbank, pausing to kick over a rock and study the underside. The brush on the opposite side of the bank snapped. The sound jerked it’s head with equal parts readiness and apprehension. It remained still for a few moments, eyes narrowed, and then resumed its walk down the riverbank toward the trail.
I followed at a distance, reminding myself of the damage they’ve been known to cause. It’s been said by some they were misunderstood creatures, that far from brutes they had a capacity for higher thinking and deeper emotion. But I’d never seen it. My experience taught me otherwise.
I’d seen the way they mark their territory, thrashing and growling and destroying. They will tolerate one another, but not for long; I’d seen them fight, seen them argue and threaten, and it’s not for the squeamish. They bellow and growl and bristle. They kill.
I didn’t know if a wild animal was inherent good or naturally evil, but I knew you could judge them the same way you could judge anything else, and that was by what you see them do rather than what you thought they were capable of doing.
I’d seen others at ease with being close in proximity to them, thinking that being “at peace” or “one with” would somehow bring a crude sense of enlightenment. Not me. I knew better. You could break an animal. You could train it and teach it and love it. But you could not tame it. They were wild, all of them. And I could never be persuaded to believe anything other than the fact that beneath their beauty and grace lay a heart that thumped to only the basest of instincts.
I kept its back to me as we travelled, by the meandering river and onto the meandering trail to the gravel road beyond. I stopped there, and it was in the stillness of the shadows that I became aware of why I had been watching it all that time. Not to observe or study or fulfill any lingering curiosity, but just to make sure it was leaving. Just to see it go.
Because the humans have made a mess of their own world, and we bears don’t want them making a mess of ours.
Without us guys
November 22, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 3 Comments
I’m on semi-vacation this week so I can enjoy Thanksgiving and start on my next book, so I’m rerunning some long-ago posts. Here’s one of my favorites…
There are more than a few people in this world who believe my wife to be a super hero. She cooks and cleans and straightens and is the official boo-boo kisser of the house. She also serves as both shepherdess and policewoman for a ragtag bunch of fourth graders who both absolutely love and mostly obey her. So yeah, I get the whole super hero thing. I really do.
But like all super heroes, my wife isn’t impervious to everything. Like Superman and Kryptonite, she has a chink in her armor.
Luckily, she has me there to make sure that chink doesn’t get any bigger. Every super hero needs a sidekick to serve as comic relief and to get into trouble now and then. That’s me.
But also like any sidekick, I have a job to do. Robin saved Batman more than once, and how many times did all those whales and sharks come through for Aqua Man? And I tend to save my wife. A lot.
To find out what that chink is and what sort of saving I do, head on over to katdish’s blog. Chances are you have your own sidekick who does this sort of thing…
Voices from the other side
November 18, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 17 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
All because of the voices.
The money comes from despairing family members and loved ones of those who have shed their mortal coils and gone over to what he calls “the other side.” He hears them, he says. He hears the dead. And he’s more than willing—for a small fee—to “cross over” to “the other side” and convey a message from the dead to the living.
What this side is or where it is or what it looks like are things he said he’d rather not get into, though I’m not sure why. It would seem to me that knowing what sort of calming and joyful paradise a person’s lost loved ones were in would bring just as much comfort as hearing their words from a third party. But the ways of the psychic are mysterious and unknowable (according to him, anyway). The rules are different but no less forgiving if broken.
Fair enough.
As much as I wanted to laugh at his antics—boy, could that guy act!—I couldn’t dismiss his claims. There’s a lot I don’t buy into as far as the paranormal goes, but hearing the voices of those who have passed on? Absolutely. And not only do I believe it happens, I believe it happens to me.
Granted, it isn’t in such a fantastical way as what happens to the guy on television. When the voices come, they don’t make me seize up. Don’t make me speak in weird accents, either. And I doubt very much that after they’re done saying whatever they need to say, I give a very serious look into the nearest television camera. It’s much slighter than that. Like a whisper.
My grandmother spoke to me a few days ago. I was doing a little work in the yard and a blue jay decided to fly into the tree above me and sing. A lot was on my mind that day. Lots to do, lots waiting after that. I was tired. Not the sort of tired you feel after you’ve accomplished something, but the bad tired, the sort that seems to push down on you like a wall. I leaned on my rake and looked up into the branches. That’s when I heard her.
An image flashed into my mind of her and I in the garden when I was a boy. We’d been picking beans and shucking corn and digging potatoes, and I’d said something to the effect that it didn’t matter how much work we did, there would always be more. And just then a blue jay had flown onto the telephone line and started to sing. And I remembered her saying, “Birds have to do a lot of work. They have to build nests and look for food and find water. But they still find cause to sing while they’re working.”
The neighbor I had growing up spoke to me a few days later. I was hanging curtains in the living room and not having a very successful go at it. I had ten minutes before I had to leave and pick up the kids, and the temptation was to just hurry up and get it done. That’s when I heard him. He was a builder, and a good one. Another image flashed into my mind, this of me standing out in his workshop and shaking his calloused hand and him saying, “Want to know the secret of good building? It’s doing it and knowing God’s watching.”
I took my time then. Did it right. Like he would have.
This isn’t extraordinary by any means. Not merely the property of rich and famous psychics. This is something we all are given.
Yes, the dead speak to us. They live on elsewhere, but also here. They whisper when we need them, appearing not as shadows in abandoned houses but as the people they were in our hearts. Guiding us. Keeping eye on us.
And reminding us of the wisdom they still hold.
Choosing to walk
November 16, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 27 Comments
That’s my daughter over there in the picture. She’s eight now, and that’s a fact I seem to struggle with on a daily basis. It seemed only days ago that I held her for the first time—held her in one hand, almost—and she grabbed my finger and squeezed. There are moments in life that moisten eyes long determined to remain calm and stoic, and that was one of them for me. I still remember that moment. I always will.
If that moment was days ago as my memory suggests, then it was only hours ago when she said her first word (“Dada,” of course) and mere minutes when she took her first steps. Then came the diabetes. I suppose that should seem like seconds ago, but it doesn’t. That seems years more than the meager four it’s been.
Isn’t it strange how that happens? How the world sometimes seems to shrink the good into moments but stretch the bad into eternities? True in my case, at least. Because there are days—and this is between you and I, dear reader—when the many moments of hearing my daughter laugh are overcome by the moments in which she’s cried, and the days of peace are swallowed by nights of fear and worry.
I suppose in that regard I’m no different than any parent. We fear and worry for our children. We protect their innocence and their happiness, we covet it, because we know the ways of the world. We know it’s dark and scary and that it isn’t fair, and we know that one unfortunate day they will know it too, and we vow to make that day as faraway as possible. Because we are parents, and that is what parents do.
Not so for my daughter. In many ways, the blessed ignorance that is childhood ended for her after four years. She is burdened with knowledge no child should be forced to carry.
She knows already that life is not fair.
It’s a fact she must face daily. It rears its teeth when her classmates are on the swings and the jungle gym and the kickball court and she must sit on the bench sipping apple juice because her sugar is low. Bites her when the headaches slam into her skull when her sugar is high. Its shadow looms every two hours when one of her little fingers is pricked and bloodied. It engulfs her in bruises on her arms and legs from the four insulin shots she must get between the time she rises and the time she sleeps.
And yet she continues.
She continues in spite of her bouts with tears and anger, and perhaps because of them. Because even now at the age of eight, she is searching for answers. God has a purpose. He must. There are times when I believe the difference between her and me is that she is sure of that and I merely hope.
But there she is in that picture, showing me—showing us—that belief is the seed from which actions grow.
She is taking part in the Juvenile Diabetes Walk held at the park in the city. In that picture, she has discovered she is not alone. There are others like her, children who have also been burdened with the knowledge that life is not fair. She walks, and as she walks she knows that each step is raising money for research and a cure for what ails her broken body.
Strapped to her is the pack carrying what she can never stray far from—juice, test strips, a meter, a finger pricker, insulin, syringes, cotton balls, Skittles, a book listing the amount of carbohydrates found in the most common foods, and a terrifying Glucagon syringe in case the worst happens (it never has, and thank you, Jesus).
She walks in the Saturday sunshine. Walks among the birds and the ducks and the others like her. Walks the 1.3 miles around the park.
And then walks around once more.
She had to take that second trip. It was neither required nor expected, it was her decision.
Her choice.
I will keep this picture, and I will remember that day. I hope she does, too.
Because it taught her an important lesson, maybe one even more important than the fact that life isn’t fair. And that lesson is this:
We often cannot choose what happens to us, but we can choose what we do with what happens to us.
We can choose doubt or faith. Love or hate. Strength or weakness. Courage or fear.
We can choose to stop or we can choose to walk.
My daughter chooses to walk. Every day. And then she chooses to walk once more.
And for that, I am grateful.
And for that, she is my hero.
This post is part of the blog carnival on Gratitude, hosted by Bridget Chumbley. To read more, please visit her site.
Snow Day Giveaway
November 15, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 3 Comments
Last week Katdish offered a Snow Day giveaway on her website, the winner of which would be the one to correctly guess the answers to some questions about me. The questions were good (very good, in fact. I had to sit and think awhile over a couple of them myself).
I’ve posted the answers today. If you’re interested, feel free to hop on over there. You just might be the lucky winner.
Unanswered prayers
November 12, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 33 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
It is the custom of the Coffey house to gather just before bedtime for a period of scripture reading and prayer. The stories we share would be familiar to most—Noah and his flood, Moses and his staff, Jesus and his cross. Each are read and discussed and questioned at length. Nothing gets left out.
If this description of our religious home life conjures an image of four people huddled together in reverent silence, I’ll ask you to erase that picture from your mind. It is not like that. Very often one or both of the children will interrupt with sounds of various bodily functions. Or they will offer their own commentary about it not all being Eve’s fault or that sitting in a whale’s belly would stink or that Moses would have done much better if he would’ve had a lightsaber.
It is lite fare to be sure, a mix of holy and silly that ends with a firm foundation in the ways of God. My kids know what they believe, and they can defend it. These days, they must.
It is afterward, when the Bible is closed and hands are joined, that all silliness ends. We close our eyes and pray. Thanks comes first—for the good day and the sunshine and the mountains, for an absence of homework and an abundance of macaroni and cheese. Only after the thanks can the asking come. It’s always been like that with the kids. It’s as if children are born knowing how to pray and then slowly forget as they get older.
Chief among their asking every night for the past year has been healing for Ms. Pierce, a teacher at their school suffering through cancer. There have been days when her mention was brief—“God please help Ms. Pierce”—and days when it was much longer. Yet neither of my kids have wavered in their conviction. The faith of children overshadows the smallness of their bodies, like the oak in the acorn. They never doubted that God would make her cancer go away, even if everyone else did. Because God is bigger than sickness. Bigger than even the sunshine and the mountains. To them, miracles are a given and the hand of the Almighty rests upon us all.
Every night, they prayed.
Tonight, they did not.
There is silence in our home as I write this; the only sound is that of my pen sliding across a pad of paper. But if I listen closely I can still hear the quiet sobs of my daughter, who has for the last two hours refused to surrender her despair to sleep.
Ms. Pierce has passed on.
Hers was a quiet death, one that provided peace after a year of pain. For her family, this day is almost a release, the dropping of a burden too heavy for them to bear any longer. There are times when God delivers us from our mortal pains, and times when He delivers us through them. Ms. Pierce went through, and that was God’s holy and mysterious will.
But those words will not comfort my children. They are too young to understand such things. And as I sit here in the fringes of lamplight surrounded by this dark night, I cannot help but think that there are times—many times—when I believe I’m too young to understand them, too.
To my children, Ms. Pierce’s death means the miracle did not happen. That either God did not hear them or He did not care to listen. That they did not pray hard enough or believe hard enough or that they were bad in some way. I’ve talked with them, told them that wasn’t true. It isn’t working yet. There is wisdom that comes from the going and wisdom that comes from those who have gone, but much of our truth sprouts from the former.
I’m sure God seems distant to them now. It’s a terrifying feeling, one that feeds a pain they’ve been blessed to have not felt before. They will mourn as we all must mourn. They will struggle with doubt and the value of their prayers. They will wonder of God’s love.
And they, too, will find that He is indeed never distant. That He is in fact closer to them now than they’ve ever known. Each heart must be broken against the hardness of this world, broken and pieced together and then broken again, that His light may shine through the cracks and illumine the world.
They will know that one day.
But it will not be today.
Back in my day…
November 10, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 15 Comments
Photo by photobucket.com
“See that?” Carl asked me. “Whaddya think about THAT?”
He stared six feet to our left and waited for me to answer. As if to show me what he thought, he spit a long brown stream of tobacco juice onto the pavement. It was a hard spit, the kind that served to both express his disgust and clear his mouth—THAWCK!
“Ain’t no sense in that,” he said.
The object of Carl’s animus happened to be the teenager who had pulled his very small but very loud car up to the gas pump beside us. The car had idled a bit—I assumed it was so the boy could enjoy the last few BummBumBUMs that thumped from his speakers—and then he got out. Sixteen, seventeen at the most. Complete with white T shirt, gold chain, cockeyed hat, and jeans that seemed to be swallowing him whole.
The boy flipped on the gas pump and looked at us—“’Sup?”
Carl and I nodded.
“Hear that?” he asked me. “‘’Sup?” What the heck’s that supposed to even mean?”
“Think he was just sayin’ hi,” I told him.
Carl hitched up his overalls (which I thought was at once impossible and unnecessary) and spit again—THWACK!
“Idiot,” he said. “Back in my day, no one’d act like that.”
Carl’s favorite saying—Back in my day.
Which, as far as I can tell, was sometimes between 1810 and 1950. It’s hard to pinpoint that exactly. Carl won’t admit to his age and I won’t dare ask, so I’m left to guess.
“Lemme tell you what’s wrong with this country,” he tells me. “People don’t care anymore. They got no respect, no dignity. Back in my day, things weren’t so. People respected each other. Might not get along, mind you, but they respected each other. Talked to each other. Nowadays people talk at instead’a with. Know what I mean?”
I nod.
“Things were simpler back then. Wanna hear some music, you go outside and listen to the birds. Now everybody’s got those dad-blamed earphones in their heads. Talkin’ on their cell phones. Back in my day, you wanna talk to someone, you write ’em a letter or you go see ’em. Know what I mean?
Another nod.
“Simpler times, Billy,” he said. “I miss those days. Feel sorry for you, too. You don’t have those memories. You were born when things were already messed up.”
Carl slapped me on the back then and eased his body back into his old truck—“They don’t make trucks like this anymore,” he’d say—and pulled away. He passed by the teenager beside us, who lifted his chin in a sort of silent ’Sup. Carl gave the boy a wave of pity. I had to smile at both of them. And I had to wonder, too.
Because as I looked over at the teenaged boy beside me, I could almost see myself once upon a time. Instead of oversized jeans and a white T shirt, I had jeans with shredded holes and a Motley Crue shirt. His hat was cockeyed. Mine was turn backwards. His was the BummBumBUM bass, mine was the ear-shattering electric guitar.
We were the same, he and I. Just twenty years apart.
Even so, I can already feel parts of me turning into Carl. I catch myself at times thinking that things were a lot better when I was a child. Safer. Simpler. The problems we have now were things unheard of back then.
Back in my day.
Time has a way of blunting the sharp edges of experience, doesn’t it? Of smoothing over the roughness of our pasts and leaving a sheen of comfort. I think we all long for the days gone by at some point, if only because they’re gone. Our yesterdays contain no questions or What ifs. No surprises. Not like the now, when things can seem dark and scary.
We fool ourselves into thinking that life was easier at some point. It wasn’t. The world has had no youth, no golden age. It has instead always been stuck in middle-aged groaning and lurches and fits. Life has always been complicated and always will be.
That’s a fact.
This, too: I’ll likely still be Carl one day, at least in thinking. And chances are the boy beside me will one day be Carl, too.
Author of Snow Day and Paper Angels (November 2011), both by FaithWords. But don't let that fool you. I'm just as confused as anyone.
And that is fine with me, because the great thing about wandering around in the fog is that you never know what you might run into.
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