Difficult losses
January 31, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 20 Comments
image courtesy of gamescrafters.berkeley.edu
We Coffeys are a competitive bunch. Life most character traits, that particular one has both its plusses and minuses. But by and large, our competitiveness has served us well. We are not content to be merely good at something. We have to be the best. And of course, in order to be the best, you first have to beat the best.
Which I suppose is why my son kept challenging me to games of Connect Four. You know the game, right? Big yellow rectangle on a pair of blue plastic stilts. One person has black checkers, the other red, and the winner is the first to get four of his or her colors in a row. Santa brought it for Christmas. Mostly because I played it all the time when I was a kid.
My son took to the game just as I did in my once-upon-a-time. We played a game under the tree on Christmas night, then again the night after, and then every night since. Until tonight, anyway. But I’ll get to that.
The thing about playing games with your kids is that you wonder when and if you should let them win. I’ve let my kids beat me at wrestling and boxing and Scrabble and chess. Not often, mind you, but often enough. It’s important they learn graciousness. Both when they win and when they lose. But I never let my son beat me at Connect Four. Some things needs to be a challenge. And to be honest, I like my kids to think I’m a genius at something for now. I know it won’t always be like that.
So we played. He tried, I toyed. He lost, I won.
Until last night.
My son beat me. Snuck in a backdoor diagonal of four red checkers. I never saw it. And what’s worse—what’s maybe worst of all—is that by that point I really was trying to beat him. He had homework to do, and so did I. I’d used my last move to set up my third black piece in a row, hidden from his sight on the opposite side of the board. It was a brilliant move. His was more so.
He dropped in his fourth checker and bulged his eyes.
I bulged mine.
“I win!” he shouted. Then he jumped up and crawled around to my side of the board just to make sure. “I win!”
There had to be some mistake. He’d miscounted. There were three checkers, not four. Or four, but not in a row. Something. Anything.
But. No.
“You win,” I whispered.
He danced. He screamed. He told his mother and sister. He even took a picture of it.
I was happy for him. And not. Like I said, I’m competitive. I don’t like to lose, especially when I’m trying to win and ESPECIALLY when I’m trying to impress my son with my staggering strategic intellect. That’s bad, I guess. But honest. At least I was a gracious loser. I allowed him his celebration. All three hours of it.
He was still awake when I went to bed, though barely. The excitement had worn off by then, leaving behind a sheen of quiet reflection on his face. I tucked his blankets and kissed him on the forehead, then headed for the hallway.
“Dad?” he asked.
“Yeah, bud?”
“I’m sorry I beat you.”
I smiled and told him not to be, that he’d won fair and square and should be proud because I was proud. The next morning, he said he hadn’t slept well. Neither did I.
I waited tonight for him to suggest another game. He didn’t. The box still sits untouched in the basket behind the recliner. I supposed it will be untouched for a while.
I suppose every child must inevitably arrive at that moment when he realizes his father is not the perfect man he’s always believed. That he in fact makes mistakes and misses things. That he loses. That he is a fallible, fallen person. It is a difficult moment, but a necessary one.
Both for the parent and the child.
Living at the hospital bed
January 27, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 19 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
The VFW was there, seven dignified old men in their uniforms and white gloves. They carried old rifles that cracked blank cartridges at just the right moment. It was a final salute to a hard man.
Sitting in the front row were the last of Saylor’s family—twins Brett and Harper, and their wives and children. To see them was to gain a glimpse into their thoughts.
For Harper, the shine of the day’s sun was not enough to lift the darkness that surrounded him. He spent the service slumped forward in his chair and refused to look at the casket that held his father’s bones. He did not gaze skyward, he merely kept his eyes on the cold ground at his feet. When the shots rang out, he recoiled. Most would say his reaction was understandable. Saylor’s yelling was often likened to the sound of a gun going off.
For his part, Harper’s twin brother was the opposite. Brett Lambert sat with a posture that was both straight and sure, his eyes halfway between the casket where the shell of his father lay and the sky the soul of his father now resided. Brett nodded as the preacher spoke of his father’s life and even laughed when everyone was reminded of how difficult old Saylor could be. He smiled when the shots rang out.
Two brothers who had lost their father. Both would say they were raised in a way that wouldn’t be described as harsh. They always had food to eat and clothes to wear. But theirs was an unloving household of impossible expectations and painful consequences when those expectations went unmet. It was their mother who held the family together. When she passed, Saylor became distant. More demanding, more angry. He never hit his boys, but that didn’t matter. Language can do as much harm as fists. Maybe more.
Both Brett and Harper would count among their greatest days their high school graduation. Not simply because new life that awaited them, but because it meant they could leave the house and never return.
That’s exactly what they did.
When word came Saylor was dying, neither knew exactly what to do. Brett leaned toward going to his father’s side, but Harper was adamant. He would not go. He couldn’t. To him, hurts could pile up such that it blocked whatever light there was to shine. Harper had a good life. He preferred to look toward the future rather than dredging up the past.
Brett went. Harper stayed. That was why those two twins could not look more different that day.
Brett would be the first to tell you it was a difficult reunion. So much hurt and resentment. So many wounds that had never healed. But there at the hospital bed, Brett found the love he believed his father had taken.
Saylor found what many do. Death has a way of clarifying things. It stalks us and finds us and places before us a mirror through which we see our truest reflection. It displays the contours of our lives, every gulley and hill, not so we may regret, but so we may smooth them while there’s time.
That’s what Saylor and Brett did for two days. They smoothed. They hugged and laughed and cried. They said they were sorry. They said I love you.
And then Saylor was gone.
I think of that story often. I haven’t seen Brett or Harper since that funeral, but I hear they’re well. Happy. The only difference they show is their reaction every time their father’s name is mentioned.
Me, I suppose I can’t blame Harper for not seeing his father one last time. I can’t imagine having a father like that, but I know well what it’s like to have a mountain of hurts block out whatever light is there to shine.
I’ve found, though, that living life at the hospital bed chips away at that mountain. I try not to let the things that need to be said go unsaid. I’m quick with I’m sorry, quicker with I love you. I hug and laugh and cry. I try to smooth over those gullies and hills.
Because there is plenty of time for many things, but not for those.
Humanimals
January 25, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 15 Comments
image courtesy of AFP/Getty Images
What you see to the right has become one of the more famous pictures taken in the aftermath of the recent landslides in Brazil. The dog’s name is Leao. She’s sitting by the grave of her owner, Cristina Maria Cesario Santana, who was among the 655 people killed.
Leao sat by the grave for two days and refused to move. From what I understand, she’s been adopted by another family since. It’s a heart-wrenching picture, no doubt. Especially to people like me who love dogs.
When I saw the picture and read the story a few days ago, I thought it would be nice to write a piece about the extraordinary bond between people and their pets. I had it all written in my head, complete with title and ending. It was going to be a good one, that piece.
But as I am given to do after reading a story online, I read through the comments. Strange as it might sound, I was even more sad after I read those than after I’d read the story of the dog and her departed owner.
A taste:
Now only if people would be as Loyal as that dog! Makes me believe that the Animal is more human than most Humans.
If things would have stayed there, I could have perhaps kept to my original idea. But they didn’t stay there. It got worse:
They are more human than us.
Animals are BETTER than humans!
Human beings…worst. species. ever.
Should you expect anything more? After all, we’re all animals, too. Humanimals.
By the time I was done reading through all of that, I’d decided that maybe I should write about something else.
I’m not so world-weary as to suggest the sort of thinking evident in those comments is representative of the majority of people. I am, however, world-weary enough to say it’s representative of a lot of us. To many, human beings are the worst thing to ever happen to our fair planet. We’re monsters. Earth’s nightmare. We destroy through violence and apathy and greed. Everything here would be better if we were not.
All you have to do for proof is turn on the news. Spread out in all its high-definition glory are people dying and polar ice caps melting and oil spewing into once pristine seas. Birds are falling out of the sky. Fish are washing ashore. A river in Canada even recently turned a strange electric lime color.
We’re killing everything. According to some, that’s what we do best.
I wonder about this. I wonder what’s happened. There was a time in the not-too-distant past when the worst thing a person could be called was a dog. Nowadays, dogs are considered much more humane.
I’m not going to get into a evolution vs. creationism thing here, because that’s not me. But I will say a lot of things changed after Mr. Darwin came up with his theory. Somewhere along the line, humanity began to lose its nobility. Suddenly we weren’t so special anymore. And worse, all the horrible things we did could now be more easily explained.
Because we weren’t just human, we were animals, too.
Humanimals.
There are a lot of examples in these times of just how bad we can be, and there’s no doubt that our ambitions and self-interests often race ahead of our hearts and consciences. But I will never believe we are mere animals.
I will never put stock in the notion that we are not set apart and above. That we all do not carry within us a spark of the Divine and a purpose to become more than we are.
“What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?” the Psalmist asked. “Yet you have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty.”
Glory and majesty. Yes.
That is why we create. Why we love. Why we aspire to do the right thing. That is why for every one person who pulls out a gun and shoots into a crowd, there will be four who rise up to stop him.
Why we struggle for things like peace and justice.
Why we love when there seems to be no point in the loving.
Because we are blessed. Fearfully and wonderfully made.
And because the depths to which we can sink pale to the heights to which we can ascend.
The last Christmas present
January 20, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 35 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
There was one last gift under the tree when we took the decorations down. I remember my wife and I looking at one another when we saw it. It was a small look followed by an even smaller one and punctuated by a shake of my head. We ended up putting it aside away from the children’s eyes. It now sits beneath the small table in front of our living room window. I suppose that’s where it’ll stay, at least for now.
It’s a box of chocolates. His favorite, from what I understand. The maroon wrapping paper is neatly folded over it. On the front is a tag. Written on it in the somewhat shaky hand of a child just getting her printing muscles sharpened is his name and the names of my two children.
The chocolates were supposed to have been delivered the last day of school before Christmas vacation. The man was a teacher’s aide, and a good one. He helped my wife during a few classes a day. She said he was a hard worker and good with the students. He helped in my daughter’s class as well, most recently on a science experiment that focused on constructing something that would keep an egg from breaking when dropped ten feet.
It snowed the night before that last day of school though, giving my kids an early Christmas present in the form of a snow day. I remember the kids were upset about that. My wife calmed them by saying they’d be able to give him his present the day they went back. It would be like stretching Christmas out and into the new year. They liked that idea.
Looking back, I wish it hadn’t snowed that day. I wish my kids would have gone to school. They would have gotten to give him his present. It may have been a nice goodbye.
Word came a few days after Christmas that he had quit to find a better job elsewhere. It was sad, but understandable. It’s tough making it these days. No one’s going to blame you for trying to find a better life.
Then, a few days later, came the news reports. First the television, then the paper.
He’d been arrested for allegedly molesting a child.
The school was quick to inform us the incident happened at the man’s home and seemed to be isolated. Neither of those facts offered much comfort. It seemed as though every time I walked into the living room, the first thing I’d see was that present.
It wasn’t a hard decision to keep the news from our children. They were still under the impression that he’d quit, and that was an impression we would leave in place. Unfortunately, other parents thought differently. On the first day back to school, one of my daughter’s classmates told her the man was in jail. Thankfully, she didn’t say why. That omission didn’t matter much to my daughter. Knowing someone you like very much is in jail is enough to break your heart. Why that person is there is irrelevant.
The Christian thing would be to pile the family in the truck and deliver it to his home. The news said he’s out on bail now and awaiting trial. I would imagine he would appreciate even a small gift of chocolates right about now. Whether he’s guilty or not, I’m sure he’s lonely.
That’s what Jesus would do.
Jesus might drive on over to that man’s house, give him a hug, and say I love you, but I can’t. I’m not Jesus. I’m just a dad who can’t stop thinking his family bought a Christmas present for someone who may be a child molester.
My mind keeps returning to the science experiment he and my daughter worked on. The one with the egg. Her team ended up using a concoction of toilet paper, cardboard, and marshmallows to catch the egg when it dropped. They won first place. Theirs was the only entry that kept the egg from breaking.
I wonder if he thought about that. I wonder if he realized eggs are like kids. Easily broken. That’s why you have to protect them. Why you have to love them and cherish them and do your best to keep the world away from them. Because the innocence they possess is the purest thing there is, and because they don’t have to be like you to enter the kingdom of heaven, you have to be like them.
I suppose he didn’t think of that. I wish he would have.
So I ask you, dear reader: What would you do with my box of chocolates?
Playing dead
January 19, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 2 Comments
Image by Tim Miller, used with permission via Flickr.
My kids have been dead for the last three minutes, and off and on for the last ten. I just checked them to be sure. They were where I’d last seen them—splayed out on the living room floor and framed by rays of sunshine that poured through the windows. I stepped over them. They didn’t move. Even put a foot in front of their noses. Nothing.
They’re good at this.
By the way the living room has been demolished, it must have been an epic battle. Lightsabers and laser pistols litter the floor. The overturned ottoman seems to have been where the last stand was made. My son is there, pistol still in hand. My daughter is near the door. She’s doing her best to be lifeless, but I can see her lungs heaving.
“Who won?” I ask them.
“We both did,” my daughter says, and I am not surprised. At eight and six, they believe there are never any losers during playtime. The winning comes in the playing itself.
“I died good, Daddy,” my son says below me. He keeps one eye closed to stay in character and opens the other to make sure I heard him.
“What’s it mean to die good?” I ask him.
“I was a hero,” he says.
“Me, too,” says my daughter. “We both were.”
I’m guest posting for my friends at High Calling today. To read the rest of the story, click here.
Selling memories
January 17, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 21 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
It’s funny how old memories can sink with the weight of new ones only to bubble up again. Tiny moments you thought had been long blown away by life’s continual wind circle back and stick to you like a burr. You find that memory is suddenly everywhere.
That’s what’s happening to me right now. One little memory.
I don’t know why it bubbled up again, don’t know why it’s sticking. I think God often makes us remember things in the past that could serve as the basis for some sort of wisdom now, but I can’t imagine how that’s the case with me. And it’s a painful memory, one I’d like to see sink back down in my mind for as long as possible. I figure writing about it may help. Or, perhaps, it may help you. In either case, it will serve its purpose.
I was ten years old, an age that is largely spent balancing on that thin line between knowing much about the world and not wanting to know. It was summer. I remember it was hot. I remember the crowd, too, and thinking it was more people than I’d ever seen in my life.
They were all gathered around two farm wagons that had been towed into my grandparents’ backyard and placed side by side. They sat in the open space between the garden my grandmother and I once worked and the giant willow tree I spent hours swinging from. There was a small patch of spearmint that grew at the base of the tree. Grandma would pick a few leaves and make tea with them just for me. I remember the people clamoring around the tree that day, trampling the patch.
I think that’s when I began to realize everything was ending.
The white Cape Cod my grandmother and grandfather had lived in for nearly thirty years was showing wear. The siding had been dulled to an almost gray by the sun. The shingles on the roof were brittle and stained by rain and wind. The house looked tired. I remember that, too. Everything looked tired.
The people who stood on top of the two giant wagons looked just as weary. My mother was one of them. Also an aunt and two uncles. They would each hold up what was in their hands as the man with the microphone yelled to the crowd in a language that was both foreign and fast. My mother held up a painting of a cabin that hung in my grandparents’ living room. I remember I would often sit on the sofa and stare at that painting while Grandma and I drank our spearmint tea. I would tell her that one day I wanted to live in a place like that. I still do.
The man with the microphone yelled more, numbers I knew mixed with words I didn’t. My mother kept her hands raised. One by one, others in the crowd raised theirs. I wondered why she looked so sad with all those people waving at her.
She put the painting down just after the man with the microphone said the one word I did understand:
“SOLD!”
I remember my father standing beside me. I asked him, “What’s going on?”
He didn’t tell. Instead he put his hand on my shoulder and led me over to the apple tree. He picked one from a high bough, rubbed it on the leg of his jeans, and offered it. I still remember how that apple tasted.
As I said, I was ten. Balancing on that thin line. But on that day the line was thinner than I cared it to be. I was old enough to know my grandfather had died and my grandmother before him, young enough to still believe I would still come and work the garden and drink the tea and stare at the painting of the cabin. I wobbled on the thin line that day between the memories I could keep and the memories being sold.
I suppose I wobble still.
The Tucson shootings, Huckleberry Finn, and the power of words
January 12, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 26 Comments
Mark Twain image courtesy of photobucket.com
The news lately has been all about the power of words, both written and spoken. A guy like me would normally think that’s a good thing. But then again, these aren’t what you’d call normal times.
It began last week, when news came that Alan Gribben, a professor of English at Auburn University, is ready to publish a new edition of Huckleberrry Finn that has been scrubbed clean of all 219 mentions of what is now culturally known as “the N-word.” A powerful word. In its place is now 219 mentions of the word “slave.” The reason, at least in Professor Gribben’s mind, was very clear: he wanted to spare “the reader from a racial slur that never seems to lose its vitriol.”
Nice of him.
That was big news for a few days, and not just in literary circles. But it paled to what happened next.
On Saturday, a gunman named Jared Loughner opened fire at a “Congress on Your Corner” event by Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson, Arizona. Six were killed. Fourteen, including Ms. Giffords, were injured.
The words started soon thereafter. Powerful ones. In a matter of hours, pundits of every stripe were decrying the vitriolic (there’s that word again) rhetoric now common in politics. Accusations flew. Blame was assigned. Both facts and evidence were nonexistent, which meant what the commentators on television and the Internet were saying told me little about what actually happened and much about their own view of things. That seems to be pretty usual now. More and more, what happened and why are things better left unanswered. That way anyone and everyone can be a scapegoat.
It was a sad thing to witness, all that talk. It seemed to me the rhetoric used to bemoan the sad state of political discourse was even more vitriolic than the political discourse itself.
Now comes the aftermath.
Most people—and myself included—believe all the nasty talk should be toned down. Not just in politics, either. There’s little doubt our society has gotten filthy-mouthed over the years. All you need for evidence of that can be found at your child’s school. It’s getting difficult to not believe ours is becoming an uncivil civilization.
But mixed in with these pleas for politeness are calls for the political equivalent of Professor Gribben’s punishment of Mark Twain and his so-called poor choice of words. One lawmaker is planning to introduce a bill that would ban symbols or language that threaten “a congressman, senator or federal judge.”
To say it another way—No more powerful words.
It’ll make things better. Safer. For us.
But I don’t think so. To me, it sounds more like this: you, Naïve Citizen, and you, Fragile Reader, need us to look after you so you won’t be offended or cause any trouble.
Maybe the writer in me is simply overreacting. My view of things is such that language, whether written or spoken, should be protected at all cost. Freedom cannot exist without them.
There is power in words, great power. But they aren’t so powerful that they can sprout from us bounties of good or evil. Those are seeds we sow ourselves, watered by our own choices and, at least in Mr. Loughner’s case, the negligence of others.
To me, the solution isn’t to abolish powerful words, but to use them more wisely. Which is why I think everyone from the simple folk to the politicians should do with their words what writers do with theirs—tremble as they craft them.
Mall Walkers
January 11, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 16 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Every writer gets stuck from time to time. Part of the process. Either the ideas won’t come or the words around those ideas. Instead of sitting down and letting your better self take over, you end up staring at a blank cursor knowing that it’s over. You can’t fool anyone anymore.
Every writer has his or her own method to reverse this process, which can be as creative as a fieldtrip to somewhere silly or as mundane as taking a shower. I suppose mine lies somewhere between the two—half silly and half mundane.
I go to the mall.
I’m a big fan of the mall, though not because of the stores or the coffee shop (okay, maybe the coffee shop). I could do without another pair of jeans or another T-shirt, especially when together they cost a little less than half a week’s pay. No, I go to the mall for another reason that’s just as valuable. To spy.
My usual spot is smack in the middle of everything, where the powers that be have arranged a set of leather couches and chairs for the shopping weary. Or for people like me, who are just curious.
Though I’m generally not someone very comfortable in the midst of a crowd, I do pretty well when I can watch them from a distance. And that’s my method of unclogging the writer’s brain. I go look. I watch people going about their daily lives and imagine what they’re thinking and feeling. And it works. Every time.
Today my attention seems focused on that ever present but often overlooked cult known as the Mall Walkers. Every mall seems to have its own dedicated troupe, and they all seem to be the same sort of people—very kind, very focused, and very old.
There are nuances of course, as there is in anything. People can perform the same activity but in different ways, depending upon their goal and their personality. And as I sit and watch them make their laps in the comfortable weather of the indoors, I see a lot of personalities. And what I see resembles much more than someone’s walk around a mall.
There are the die-hards, of course. Men and women who prance about in actual workout clothes and shoes much more expensive than my own. They’re not here to shop or socialize. They’re here to work. And they take that work seriously. Head down, arms pumping. And they refuse to wander from the gray tiles that line the edge of the mall lest they cheat themselves.
Others see this morning ritual as more of a social gathering. They’re here to walk, yes. To exercise, even. But they seem to exercise their mouths as much as their legs. They talk as they go, and talk about anything. Family, friends, church, who’s doing what and to whom and why. These people have no problem with breaking their stride to say hello to someone or do a little window shopping. They’re here for better health, but they also understand that exercising alone won’t guarantee that. Community and a sense of fun plays into the equation in equal parts.
At the other end of the spectrum is the upper crust of the mall-walking society. The ones whose choice of clothing is the sundress or the suit and tie. They’re presence here stumps me. They don’t seem interested in exercising. Only an idiot would wear a sport jacket or high heels for a workout. But neither do they seem to be here for the socializing, since they tend to turn up their noses to the other walkers (and especially to those of their own ilk).
After watching them pass for the fourth time, not walking but more ambling, I decide they’re here just to be here. They’re content to just be seen.
Then, like some rare celestial event, members of all three groups intersect around me—the diehards and the social butterflies to my left, and the country-clubbers to my right. Around and around on their journey from beginning to end.
And I decide that we’re all mall walkers in our own right, left to spend our days journeying from beginning to end. Like them, there are those who see that journey as a nose-to-the-grindstone marathon of endless work and self-improvement. And there are those who prefer to walk through their days making friends and having fun. And there are still others whose sole purpose seems to be all the attention they can get.
And then there are people like me, who make their own journey while watching others make theirs.
A final Monday
January 10, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 2 Comments
It’s still pretty close to the beginning of the year, that magical time when we can tweak bits and pieces of our lives and have a pretty good feeling they’ll stick. Those tweaks can be personal or professional or both or neither. That part really doesn’t matter. What matters is that one feels a need to adjust something in order to make something else better.
I’m going to be doing a little tweaking of my own beginning this week, and I’m talking about it over at katdish’s site today. Stop on over there and read. And have a great Monday!
Johnny’s fear
January 7, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Let me tell you about Johnny.
I met him when I was eight. It was during Bible school, those dreaded five days during the summer when you’re trying to fight the sensation that you’re back in school because you’re afraid God will be mad at you if you feel that way.
He was sitting under the big oak tree by himself, which was where the wayward softball Brent Stinnett hit landed. I was playing centerfield, so I was the one who retrieved it. I asked Johnny to toss it to me. He wouldn’t, so I got it myself. Then I asked if he wanted to play.
“No,” he said.
“Why not?”
Johnny lowered his head and kicked at a root jutting up from the ground, then shrugged.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s fun.”
“No,” he said again.
So I left him there under the oak.
I found him in the same spot the next day for the same reason (that Brent Stinnett could really pound a softball). This time, Johnny was first:
“I don’t want to play,” he said.
“I didn’t ask if you wanted to,” I told him.
“Well, just in case you were gonna, I don’t want to.”
I suppose the Christian thing would have been for me to befriend Johnny right then and there, or at least do a bit of gentle prodding to see what was really bothering him. But I was your average eight-year-old boy, which often means doing the Christian thing is not nearly as important as playing a game of softball.
Besides, by then the chattering had gone around the Bible school playground that Johnny wouldn’t play because he was afraid. Of what, no one was certain.
By day three, I’d learned that when Brent Stinnett came up to the plate, I should back up. So I did, right next to Johnny under his tree.
“Are you really scared like all the kids say?” I asked him.
Silence. Which to me even then meant yes.
“You ain’t gotta be scared. It’s just a game.”
“I ain’t scared,” he said. Then, as if remembering he was in Bible school and thus that God was watching, he added, “Much. I ain’t scared much.”
“What are you scared of?”
“Lots of things,” he said. “Falling down. Striking out. Getting hurt. Hitting somebody. Getting my clothes dirty. Getting stung by a bee. I’m allergic to bees, you know.”
I didn’t know, but at that moment Brent Stinnett flew out to left field and the inning was over. I jogged back toward the field and shouted at Johnny over my shoulder, “You’re just thinkin’ too much.”
Johnny never did play softball that year. Or any other, as a matter of fact. But he did keep coming to church, and it didn’t take me long to realize he was afraid of much more than playing softball. Much, much more.
Like telephones, radios, the dark, spinach, horses, thunder, and butterflies. The list was endless. Johnny was a walking neurosis. It’s a wonder he’s survived this long.
But he has.
I ran into him at the post office the other day, along with his two children and Mary, his wife. Nice family. Johnny has a big job at a bank now. He’s happy and content. And, finally and completely, unafraid.
There was no psychotherapy involved in Johnny’s transformation. No pills or prescriptions. To hear Johnny say it, there was just his faith and his family. That was all he needed.
Maybe that’s all everyone needs. Because the truth is that we all harbor our own fears, those shadows that crawl and slink deep inside and get in the way of seeing the beauty of things. I’m not afraid of softball or telephones or spinach, but I am afraid. I’m afraid a lot. And there are times when I want more than anything else the opposite of that fear.
For the longest time, I thought that opposite was courage. Makes sense, doesn’t it? But Johnny’s taught me different.
He’s taught me that the opposite of fear isn’t courage, the opposite of fear is Love.
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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