Snapshots
August 31, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 11 Comments
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Part of my job entails keeping up with the comings and goings of about one thousand college students. All have arrived at the doorstep of adult responsibility, and all must walk through as best they can. Some glide. Others stumble.
Students are constantly arriving, eager to fill their hungry minds and lavish themselves in newly found freedom. Others have found that those freedoms can lead to all sorts of trouble and so are on their way back home.
The status of these students must be cataloged and recorded and then shared with various departments by way of email. Very businesslike, these emails. Concise and emotionless. But they are to me snapshots of lives in transition.
One such message came across the computer yesterday. The usual fare—student’s name and identification number, and her status. But then there was this:
She will not be returning and is withdrawing.
She failed everything.
As I said, businesslike. Concise and emotionless.
I’ve always had a problem with brevity. I have a habit of explaining a small notion with a lot of words. Which I guess is why that email struck me so hard. Here was three months of a person’s life, ninety days of experiences and feelings, summed up in three words:
She failed everything.
Though I don’t know this person, I can sympathize. I’ve been there. Many times. I know what it’s like to begin something with the best of intentions and an abundance of hope, only to see everything fall apart. I know what it feels like to realize that no matter how hard you try, you just can’t. Can’t win. Can’t succeed. Can’t make it.
I know what it feels like to fail. Everything.
When my kids were born, I wanted to be the perfect father. Always attentive. Never frustrated. Nurturing. Understanding. And I was. At first, anyway. But things like colic and spitting up and poopy diapers can wear on a father. They can make a father a little inattentive, not so nurturing, and very frustrated. So I failed at being the perfect father.
Same goes for being the perfect husband, by the way. I failed even more at that.
And I had the perfect dream, too. What better life is there than that of a writer? But no, that one hasn’t gone as expected. Failure again.
At various times, struggling through each of those things, I’ve done exactly what young girl in the email did. I withdrew. Not from college. From life. I gave up. Surrendered. Why bother, I thought.
But I learned something. I learned there’s sometimes a big difference between what we try to do and what we actually accomplish. That many times we don’t succeed because there’s an equally big difference between what we want and what God wants.
That failure is never the end. It can be, of course. We can withdraw and not return. Or we can learn that it is only when we fail that we truly draw near to God. We can better understand the that our prayers must sometimes be returned to us for revision. Not make me this or give me that, but Thy will be done.
I’ve failed everything. Many times.
Also remade.
I may not have made myself the perfect father, but God has made me a good dad.
I may not have become the perfect husband, but God has shown me how to be a soul mate.
I may not write for money, but I do write for people.
Failure has not been my enemy. Failure has been my salvation.
Our lives have broken places not so we can surrender to life, but so we can surrender to God. And failure will hollow us and leave us empty only so we may be able to hold more joy.
A precipitous balancing act
August 29, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
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This past weekend, I got the hammock out.
Strung it between two trees in the backyard under a warm August sun. Just me and the sky.
There’s a lot to be said for a good hammock. Back when I was a young and single man, the bedroom of my tiny apartment was graced with one. I had no bed, I had a hammock. And I rocked myself to sleep every night dreaming I was on some warm and secluded beach far away. When my girlfriend agreed to become my wife, she said the hammock had to go. It was just as well. Eventually, you have to put the old things aside in favor of the new.
But sometimes those old things come back, if only for an afternoon. It had been a long, difficult week. I needed a break. My sunny disposition had turned sullen, and I had a serious case of the Grouchies. I needed to rock myself and dream of warm beaches to chase the pessimism away.
The knots were good, the hammock threads still strong. I moved to one tree and set my leg in the middle.
Leaned over.
Lifted my other leg off the ground.
Fell.
And by that, I mean tumbled. Hard. I did a complete three-sixty in the air and landed on my neck. I couldn’t breathe for thirty seconds.
Tried it again—setlegleanoverliftleg. Fell. It was an even worse fall that time, so bad that I actually did see warm beaches and thought I’d died.
The third attempt almost never happened. By then I was reciting the old adage of fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. To the best of my recollection, there was no fool me three times because no one in history had been so stupid to try it again.
But I did. I really wanted to chase that pessimism away, and I really wanted to do it in my old hammock.
I moved to one tree and set my leg in the middle.
Leaned over.
Lifted my other leg off the ground. Slow, nice and slow, and…there. I’d made it.
Wasn’t easy, though. I’d forgotten that the thing about sitting in a hammock was just how difficult it was. Whatever stability you may find won’t last long. A breeze will kick up or you’ll sneeze or you’ll scratch a sudden itch, and for the next moments you’ll be fighting both gravity and inevitability.
The trick isn’t just learning how to get into a hammock, the trick is learning how to stay there. How to keep your balance. And the way you do that is simple—realizing you can tumble at any moment. You can tumble and you can have no understanding of why.
The best way to handle that knowledge, to maintain that balance, is to accept it and tuck it into a corner of your mind. Because the only way you can keep yourself from falling is by understanding that falling is a perpetual possibility.
Sounds pessimistic, I know. But it’s true. I laid there in that hammock for three hours counting the clouds and never fell once, all because I kept in my head I was always one twitch away from doing so.
I dreamed of faraway beaches, places where stress was a foreign word and time didn’t matter, where the sun was always warm. And yet I was allowed to dream of all that optimism because of the cynicism that held me in place.
Which got me thinking. Maybe the sadness we feel can teach us just as much as the happiness we want. Maybe God at times uses our doubt more than our faith. Maybe the best will happen and maybe the worst, and maybe the best we can hope for in this life is a strange and mysterious mix of the two.
I suppose we’ll all find out in the by and by. But for now, I’m sticking with this—the best way to rock away a warm afternoon is to know it can all tumble down.
This teeter totter life
August 24, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 22 Comments
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I spent much of last Friday at the hospital with my wife, who had been feeling particularly ucky of late. The doctors had (and as I write this have) no idea what’s wrong. Tests were in order. So off we went, her to be poked and prodded for two hours, and me to pass the time in the waiting room.
As I am not a fan of feeling ucky or being poked and prodded, hospitals rank just above funeral homes on my list of Places I Wish Not To Go. It isn’t the germs that bother me, not the echoes of coughs or the abundance of wheel chairs and gurneys. It’s the despair, I think. That thick dark cloud of inevitability that seems to hang over everyone and everything. Going to the hospital makes me confront the fragility of life. That’s something I’d rather not consider.
I brought enough work to keep my mind off things. I knew the waiting area had a television, but the possibility of watching Sportscenter all morning quickly evaporated when I was told the only channel offered was HGTV (according to the nice old lady with the clipboard, anything else may be construed as “controversial.”) I had a notebook—1,000 words a day every day is what I was taught, even when you’re sitting in a hospital—and my i-Pod—the new Trace Adkins album? Gold.
I was ready, oh yes I was. The only pondering of life and death that day would come from my characters rather than myself. Yes sir, I was going to mind my own business.
The only thing I didn’t take into account was that there would be other people in need of the sort of modern medical technology that only the local hospital’s radiology department could provide. Though the waiting room was relatively empty when we arrived, by the time my wife’s name was called, it was nearly full. And five minutes later, I had company.
The woman who sat down beside me with the crutches looked eighty but swore she wasn’t a day over fifty-seven. We exchanged hellos and I resumed my scribbling. She asked what I was doing. I said work (never say you’re a writer, I was taught that as well). She nodded and leafed through a ten-month-old magazine for exactly thirty seconds, at which time she sat it back down on the wooden table between us and asked what was wrong with me.
“I don’t think you’d have the time,” I joked.
She chuckled and touched my arm—eighty-year-old women who swear they’re not a day over fifty-seven love to touch arms—and said, “I mean what brings you here?”
“My wife’s getting a once-over,” I told her. “You?”
She tapped the crutches and then felt her leg. “Busted myself. Fell down the stairs. I blame the cat.”
“Cats are evil,” I said.
She gave me a knowing smile.
“Cats are not evil,” said the woman across from us. A sling was wrapped around her neck which made her left arm form an L. She looked as though she were leaning on an invisible fence post. “I have three, and they’re darlings.”
“Bet your cat did that to your arm,” I said.
“Nope. I fell out of a wheelbarrow.”
“Pardon?” the woman beside me said.
“Yep, wheelbarrow.” She looked down at her arm and up to us. The look on her face was a mix of embarrassment and pride. “My son said I was too chicken to let him push me down the hill in it. Guess I showed him, huh?”
“Guess so,” I said.
The man to her left had been listening this whole time under the guise of being immersed in his sports magazine. I doubt any of us thought he was actually reading it. Hard to do with a neck brace.
“I did that once,” he said. “Made it down our hill just fine. Shut that cocky son of mine’s mouth up, sure enough. I don’t take chances anymore, though.”
“What happened to you?” the old lady beside me asked.
“This?” He pointed to the brace, just in case she were asking of anything else. “I got up off the couch. Seriously. All I did. Felt something pull, just…pop goes the weasel.”
I never got any writing done. It was better to sit and talk, I think. Better to be reminded of the fragility of life, that strange thing that seems so hard but is instead so soft. I was reminded of just how clumsy we all are and how we can get hurt even when we take no chances.
Because our existence is but a thin strip of breath upon which we teeter and totter and, eventually, will tumble off.
Farther along
August 22, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 23 Comments
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She and her husband were in the back row. That was the accustomed place for my family and in-laws, as we are numerous enough to require an entire pew unto ourselves. We scrunched in, the seven of us seated at her and her husband’s left, careful not to bump her wheelchair.
“I love you,” she said, first to my wife and then my daughter. Her words were muffled and childlike, as if spoken in surprise and through a mouth filled with marbles.
“I love you,” she said to the couple who approached her. They placed their hands on her shoulders and spoke in calm and deliberate words. They asked how she was feeling, how she was. “I love you,” she said again, and the smile on her face said more than her faded vocabulary could.
The preacher—“I love you”—said he loved her right back. He tucked his worn leather Bible under his left arm and took her hand in both of his. I watched as the muscles in his forearm flexed, giving her fingers a light squeeze, praising God.
“I love you.”
The congregation settled into the Sunday morning ritual of greeting/prayer/announcement. The pianist then began the opening of the first hymn—“To God be the Glory”—and all but she stood to praise the Lord in song.
To God be the glory, great things He hath done…
The slow movement to my left was hers. She placed one frail hand upon her husband’s and bid him to help her stand. He placed his arms around her and hefted her up, steadying her against the gravity that pushed down on her and the mind that worked to make sense of it all. I wondered if this too was the glory of God, a great thing He hath done.
I watched her as she sang, her voice too soft to stand with the others but her lips moving free, mouthing not O perfect redemption, the purchase of blood, but I love you I love you I love you I love.
I watched her, and what I saw was the woman she once was rather than the woman she was now. The Sunday school teacher, the choir member, the woman who organized Bible School in the summer and the Christmas program in the winter, the woman who at the young age of barely fifty had suffered a stroke that erased much of who she’d been and replaced it with a child imprisoned in a cell of flesh and blood. A child who needed help to move and wash and eat and whose vocabulary was condensed to three words.
I love you.
Act II of the Sunday morning ritual contained further announcements and a brief presentation by the church’s youngsters. Do not ask me what was said, I don’t know. I suppose I should have been listening, but I was watching her. Watching as she eased back into her wheelchair and looked out with bright but confused eyes. Watching as she said I love you to her husband.
We rose for the offertory hymn, this “Worthy of Worship,” a congregational favorite. She remained seated this time—she’s so tired now, not like before—but mouthed her own translation nonetheless, mouthing
I love you I love, you I love you
where we sang
Worthy of rev’rence, worthy of fear
And I wondered upon looking at her—God help me, but I did—that her sight made me fear God but also tempted me not to reverence Him. What God was worthy of reverence who could allow such a thing to one of His own? To pardon the darkness of this world and allow it to strip this woman down? To leave her a husk of what she once was and call it good?
For much the same reasons I missed the children’s presentation, I missed the sermon. The congregation rose. I joined them when I saw that she and I were the only people not standing. Three men stood behind the podium, songbooks in their hands, as the piano began the closing hymn, Farther Along.
I did not sing. Could not. I was watching her instead, still not knowing the Why—it’s always the Why that trips me up—but knowing that the fears and worries that once upon a time defined her living did no more. Like her body, her life had been reduced to the most fundamental level, one where Hello and Goodbye and Thank you and Praise the Lord all mean I love you, and perhaps that is what it should mean for all of us.
I joined in on the last refrain:
Farther along we’ll know all about it,
Farther along we’ll understand why.
Cheer up my brother, live in the sunshine,
We’ll understand it all by and by.
The penny man
August 18, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 3 Comments
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Walk with me for a moment. Won’t take long, I promise. I just want to show you something.
This street here? Leads to downtown. I’m not really a downtown sort of guy, for the past few months I’ve taken my workday lunch at the coffee shop just ahead. That one, with the steaming cup of cappuccino painted on the window and the tables outside. We’ll take a table. I know it’s hot out here, but you’ll be better able to see what I’m going to show you. And the iced coffee will keep you cool. My treat. In the words of the Penny Man, “It don’t suck.”
All these cars and people? Never seen them before. That’s the way it is in the city, right? So much randomness. But mingling around in all those people are some I see each time I come here. That little lady in the pink shorts walking her toy poodle? Every day like clock-work. And that something-year-old skateboarder looking fashionably apathetic by the lamppost in front of the antique store? He’s hung out there every day for the past four weeks. See? We all have our own routines and live in our own little worlds, but they overlap sometimes. We’re not as disconnected from one another as we think.
And then there is the Penny Man. See him? No, on the other side of the street. Nice-looking guy in the suit. Yep. Comes through about this time every day. Not sure what he does for a living. Probably a lawyer or something, since the courthouse is right around the corner there. He’s why I asked you to walk down here with me. He’s what I want to show you.
Why is he the Penny Man? Don’t get ahead of me. You’ll see, just watch him. There, see that? Missed it? Don’t worry. I don’t know how many times I watched him and missed it, too. He’s good, really good. See how his hand’s in his front pocket? Now wait.
There it is.
I’m guest posting today for Bonnie Gray over at Faith Barista, where you’ll find the rest of this post. Please stop on over and say hello.
Nighttime prayers
August 15, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
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An important part of my nighttime routine is making a final pass through the house. I make sure the doors are locked and the outside light is on. Make sure the morning coffee is ready—it’s the smell of coffee and not the sound of the alarm that gets me out of bed—and the lights above the sink are shining—just in case someone wakes in the middle of the night thirsty. I’ll check to make sure my son is adequately covered and hasn’t flopped and flipped his blankets off. My final stop is to check my daughter’s sugar, because she may sleep and we all may sleep, but diabetes never does.
I always pray over my children then. Every night, without fail. They don’t know this; I’ve never told them. I suppose doing so is as much for my benefit as theirs. I have an uneasy relationship with the night. It’s the time of day when I often get most of my work done, and yet I spend much of that time peering into the shadows for what isn’t there.
My prayers are the usual ones—help us to sleep well, bless our family, let Your angels stand guard. And keep us safe, always that. Always a lot of that.
I heard a preacher the other day talk about praying for safety. He said Christians shouldn’t place so much of a premium on that, that this is pretty much one of the safest countries in the world and so we’re pretty much wasting our words, that we should instead pray for boldness because that’s what we need more. He said we’re often content to remain where we are because that’s where everything is safe and familiar, when God wants us to go forth and conquer new lands within and without.
I’ll admit he stepped on my toes a little with that. It’s probably true that I need more boldness than safety, just as true about those new lands. And I’ll say that fear plays an important part in my life and maybe too much, what with all those shadows and whatnot.
So maybe instead of praying that God will keep us safe, I should pray that He will keep us on our toes. And rather than asking that His angels stand guard over us, I should pray that they will charge ahead of us into new places and new ways of seeing things. Maybe I’ve been tricked into thinking that my life is better thought of as something to be endured rather than made better, as if my purpose in being here is to comfort myself before I comfort others.
Maybe.
But maybe praying for safety is important, too. It reminds me that despite what everyone in my family may believe, I’m small. Just a tiny speck in a big world, one that oftentimes is much more scary than it is beautiful. And one who often needs a great deal of help.
Perhaps if I had the faith of the preacher I heard the other day, I wouldn’t need to ask for so much safety. Perhaps if I had his view of the world, I would see no reason to fear anything. I would see the battle as already won and the last sentence already written, one with an exclamation point rather than a period.
I hope to have that sort of faith one day. For now, I don’t. For now, I look at this world and see more shadows than light and more of what could go wrong than what has already gone right.
Larry and the poor folk
August 10, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 10 Comments
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I ask Larry if he’s still watching over the poor folk every time I see him, and every time he says yes. He says yes and then offers me one of those nods that are accompanied by pursed lips. You know, the kind of expression that means it’s tough to look but you have to anyway. Someone’s got to watch over them, Larry says, and it might as well be him. Especially since he was poor once.
He’ll tell me he still watches over them from the same place, right across the river from the big building where they like to gather. Not a pretty sight—Larry will tell me that too, and always—but one worth watching nonetheless, if only for the education the sight provides. “There but for the grace of God,” he’ll say, and then he’ll nod and purse his lips again.
He says there have been times in the past when he’s taken the bridge across the river and gone to see them. Or tried. The poor folk will sometimes entertain Larry’s presence for a while. He was after all one of them once, and the poor folk are mannerly on the outside even if they are lost inward. They’ll say hello and how-you-doing and come-on-in. Larry will hello them back and say he’s fine, just fine. But he never goes in the big building. He’s been in there too many times in his life, he’ll tell me, and he’s seen all there is to be seen. I guess that’s true enough, but sometimes I think Larry’s afraid he’ll catch the poor again, like it’s some sort of communicable disease spread by contact.
Better than driving across the bridge to say hello is to stay on the other side of the river and watch. That’s what he tells me. It’s sort of a warning, though it’s one I don’t need. To be honest, I don’t have much of a desire to be around the poor folk. I like it where I am, right here with Larry and the rich people. Maybe I’m afraid I’ll catch poor, too. Maybe deep down I think they’ll sneeze on me.
Larry says he has God to thank for being rich now, and when he says this he won’t nod and purse his lips. He’s much more apt to pat the rust spot on his old truck—a ’95 Ford from down at the local car lot, which was a steal at $5,000—or take off his greasy cap as a sign of respect for invoking the Almighty. Yesir, Larry will say, God stripped away all of his poor and made him rich. I guess that’s nothing new in a time when a lot of people think God’s sole purpose in the universe is to shower down hundred dollar bills on everyone who’s washed in the blood of the Lamb.
Sometimes I’ll ask him if the people who gather at the big building across the river are all poor. Surely there are a few rich ones mixed in. He’ll tell me yes, there are a few rich ones, but they’re rare. Once he said I’d just as soon go in the big building looking for a unicorn as I would a rich person. I laughed at that. I think it was the way he’d said it—“Yooney-corn.”
Still, curiosity kicked in. I had to find out for myself.
I drove up to the big building one town over, careful to park across the river as Larry suggested. Lines of cars filled the parking lot—from my vantage point, I saw seven Mercedes, half a dozen BMWs, and three Jaguars. I watched patrons adorned in fancy dresses and pressed suits go in for dinner, watched the golf and tennis players come out.
Larry’s poor folk.
He was once one of them (it was the Mercedes and the golf for Larry, the fancy dress for his wife, and the tennis for his kids). They were at the country club five days a week and sometimes six, depending on how busy they all were. He’ll say he swore he was rich. But then came the recession followed by the job loss, and suddenly the Mercedes was gone (replaced by the truck, a steal at five grand) and so was the country club.
That’s when God showed Larry that what he thought was riches was really poverty. That’s when Larry found that wealth is better measured in love and family and simple things.
Larry says he never knew how poor he was because all that money got in the way. Now he says he’s the richest man in the county.
I think he might be right.
Believing in maybe
August 8, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 11 Comments
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My daughter and I are standing in the middle of a one-lane dirt road deep in the woods. Locals call it the Coal Road, the story being that generations ago coal from the mountains was transported through here by some sort of rail. I’m not sure if that’s true or not—something about that doesn’t seem right—but it’s the Coal Road nonetheless, maybe like big people are often nicknamed Tiny or Slim.
It’s peaceful here on the Road, though during summer nights and autumn weekends the local teenagers come here to drink and, in words my grandmother would once whisper, “Know each other in the Biblical way.” The thirty thousand acres leading from the Coal Road into the mountains are both unspoiled and wild. Mysterious, too. There are plenty of stories about this wood and the spirits that are said to inhabit it. And as someone who’s tromped and trampled through much of it over the years, I can say at least some of them are true.
But those are other stories for other times, because at the moment my daughter is on the prowl. On a mission. Strapped to her narrow waist is a fanny pack that Scooby and the gang might call a Clue Kit, and right now she’s using a magnifying glass to inspect some rather strange footprints in the dirt.
“This is something, Daddy,” she says. She moves the magnifying glass from the ground and stares at me with it. One of her eyes looks like a giant brown golf ball. “This might be him.”
I offer a serious and grave nod as if it might just be him, even though I’m pretty sure what my daughter is looking for would not be wearing a size eleven hiking boot. She takes the small digital camera from her fanny pack and snaps off a couple pictures. “Okay,” she says, “let’s keep going.”
We move from the Road to the trail—this one about three miles and leads to a large reservoir, but I don’t think we’ll go that far. The day is hot and she knows there are snakes. My daughter doesn’t like snakes. I figure if I can come up with a few more clues, that will satisfy her.
Included in the fanny pack is the book that started all of this. I can’t remember the name, Monsters of the South or Unexplained Monsters of Virginia, something like that. My daughter likes her ghost stories, so any book that includes Monsters or Unexplained in the title is fair game. Her grandmother says such reading material is a little too Devil-like, but I don’t mind. I like Monsters and Unexplained, too.
That book led to another and then to another, and then finally to an internet search that lo and behold revealed that Bigfoot himself—or at least one of his kin—had been spotted here in the unspoiled and wild and mysterious wood along the Coal Road back in the 1980s. I don’t remember hearing such a story, but I’m inclined to believe that anyone could see anything here given enough moonshine. I didn’t tell my daughter that when she suggested we take a lazy Saturday afternoon and turn it into an Unexplained Monster hunt, I just said okay. I’d never hunted a monster, and we were due for some daddy/daughter time. Besides, there wasn’t much else going on.
“Look at that!” she says. “There’s a clue.”
And it is, though the marks on the old oak in front of us are a clue that a bear has been by rather than a Bigfoot. I tell her to take a picture. She does. I leave out the part about the bear. That would scare her more than a Bigfoot.
We find other things on our walk—deer hair that is really Bigfoot hair, the chatter of squirrels that are really Bigfoot giggles, and a small hole in the rocks that just might be a Bigfoot home. All are studied and pictured and cataloged in the small notebook in her fanny pack. By then it’s noon. We’re both getting hungry and we’re both sweating, signs that it’s time to head home.
We drive the old truck over potholes and washed-out dirt road, the sun shining through canopies of leaves. It’s been a good day. A great one. We’re making memories.
“Daddy,” she says, “I really don’t believe there’s a Bigfoot. But I like to believe in maybe.”
I nod and smile and rub her head, satisfied that our trip here to this ancient and (some would say) haunted wood has revealed something to us both.
Because she’s right, my daughter.
It’s always good to believe in maybe.
Making a memory
August 3, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 21 Comments
image courtesy of katdish
We are by the creek, my son and I, our backs against the grass and our feet in the water, looking first to make sure the snakes are gone and then to the two white wrappers between us.
“You’re first tonight,” I tell him.
“Orange,” he says, “because it’s like the sun.”
I hand him the wrapper on the left and look out toward the mountains. Sure enough, the sun looks orange. That means red for me. Good. I like red.
He opens the package and licks the popsicle inside. There is a satisfying smack on the end, followed by, “Aaah.”
We sit for a while and watch in silence, watch the robin searching for supper in the front yard and the bumblebee doing the same in the flower bed and my wife and daughter watering the hanging baskets. I don’t know what my son is thinking, but I’m thinking that sometimes you can be closer to someone when you’re not talking and just enjoying their company.
These post-supper trips to the creek with popsicles were his idea. The inaugural event was held on the first day of summer vacation. Seems like that was just yesterday, but it was almost two months ago. Time ticks faster when we’re having fun. That’s what my son told me the other day. Then he said he sat for five minutes and watched the clock and discovered it ticks just the same whether you’re looking or not.
There’s another lick and smack, but this one is followed by a sigh. I ask him what’s wrong.
“Summer’s almost over,” he says.
I ask him how he knows that, and he answers that he saw the newspaper last Sunday. There was a back-t-school ad mixed in with the comics section. He says seeing that made him feel like he did the time he ate chili and then ice cream after.
“I want it to stay summer forever,” he says, “like on Phineas and Ferb.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I’d like it to stay summer forever too, and offering up some cockamamie wisdom about how all good things must come to an end would only depress the two of us more. Instead, I start singing the Phineas and Ferb theme song. Partly because I have to say SOMETHING, but mostly because it’s nearly impossible to sing and be depressed at the same time.
He joins in halfway through. When we finish, the lick/smack/sigh is replaced by lick/smack/smile. Much better.
“Dad, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I tell him.
“Are we making a memory?”
I bite down on my red popsicle and think. “I reckon so,” I tell him.
The smile is bigger now. It’s the sort of smile you get after you’ve been carrying a very heavy something for a long while and can finally lay it down.
He is silent again, but not because he didn’t hear me. He’s too busy to talk. He’s more concerned with doing the one thing children always excel at and adults usually fail miserably—being in the moment. His eyes are bugged and his breathing is deep, steadying himself against the picture his mind is taking.
The cool water flowing over his hot toes, the orange sun peering from the peaks of blue mountains, sounds of robinsong in the trees and frogs in the woods, the sight of his mother and sister and the gentle mist of hose water over purple and white flowers, orange popsicle leaking down his fingers, the bright sky and the warm breeze, the first star of the night and the knowing that for this one instant, the whole world is peaceful and good and right.
He is living this moment, and when he is done he will tuck it into a secret place in his heart and keep it safe. He will tend this moment and nurture it and keep it whole. Alive.
And on some cold and distant January day that promises little more than spelling tests and word problems, my son will sit in his small desk at school and pull that memory out. He will look out the window and see bright skies rather than somber heavens and green leaves rather than bare trees. He will hear robinsong and taste orange popsicle and feel cool water running over hot toes.
It will be winter then and he will be at school. He will know then that the world is not peaceful and good and right, but he will gain strength knowing it once was and thus may well be again.
All because of the memory he made with me on this summer night, here by the creek.
A prayer to remember
August 1, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 28 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
On July 23, the NASCAR Nationwide series stopped in Nashville, Tennessee. It was an evening that promised all-you-can-handle-and-some-you-can’t action, the sort of reckless redneckery of screaming engines and burning rubber that has made racing one of the most popular sports in America.
With all it’s modern equipment and cutting-edge technology, NASCAR is nonetheless steeped in tradition. Its roots run all the way back to Prohibition, and its drivers are for the most part good ol’ country boys. And every race begins with a prayer.
That night in Tennessee, the honor of providing the invocation fell on the shoulders of Pastor Joe Nelms, a Nashville local. With heads bowed, hats doffed, and cameras on, Pastor Joe took the microphone and prayed this:
What happened afterwards was the sort of media deluge that could only happen in the age of YouTube and social media. Pastor Joe Nelms became an overnight celebrity. ESPN had a field day. Newspapers, news channels, blogs, radio. All carried the prayer, all had the same question—Why?
Here’s what Pastor Nelms said in one interview:
“I want[ed] to get somebody’s attention, so that’s been our desire every time we’ve been up there, to try to make an impact on the fans and give them something they’ll remember, and maybe they’ll go home on a Friday night or a Saturday night and say, ‘Maybe I ought to get up and go to church in the morning.’”
And really, what better way to do that than to give thanks to mighty machines, GM performance technology, Sunoco racing fuel, Goodyear tires, and his smokin’ hot wife?
Now you’d probably be right in saying I caught wind of this and thought right off that Joe Nelms had just uttered a prayer the likes of which hadn’t been heard since Jesus Himself taught us to ask for our daily bread and to deliver us from evil. And why not? I wouldn’t consider myself a NASCAR guy, though I suspect I fit their target demographic of country-livin’, Levi-wearin’, tobacco-spittin’, jacked-up-Chevy drivin’ men.
But you know what? That’s not how I reacted. That’s not how I reacted at all.
And while I can appreciate the good Reverend’s intentions, I gotta say I was more than a little saddened. I was raised to take prayer sincerely. I close my eyes and bow my head with the knowledge that I am about to utter my feeble voice to the Lord of all creation, the Holy One who made not just me, but the farthest star and the tiniest atom. And more than that, He HEARS me. And more than even THAT, He cares about what I say, knows my words even before I speak them. Even before I think them.
It’s serious business, praying. And while I’m sure you realize God has a sense of humor—have you taken a look around lately?—I’m sure you also realize there is a time and a place. On bended knee is neither.
We live in a time when mockery of God is accepted, even cool. How many times a day do you hear, “Oh my God”? How many times do you get a text that contains OMG? How many times have you heard “Goddammit” on the television lately?
Plenty, I’d imagine, if you’re like me.
But we want to be cool. That’s the thing. We know our task is the Christian walk, but it’s a straight walk, a rigid one, so why not strut a little? Why not? If we dumb down God to make Him more accessible to people, more believable, more Jesus-would-have-a-beer-with-me, then is that such a bad thing?
Sometimes I think yes. It is.
God is not cool. I think we’d do well to remember that. I think we’d do well to keep close the treasured wisdom that He is big and holy and we are small and not. And I think it’s a good guess that what we often mistake as His laughter are really His tears.
Honestly—what did you think of that? Did you chuckle? Laugh? Or did you think something along the lines of, What the heck was that? Because I figure I’m either really, really right on this one, or really, really wrong.
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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