birthday

A letter to me

July 6, 2015 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

When helping your parents clean out their attic, it helps if you approach the task as a recovery mission. You aren’t discarding, you’re salvaging. I know this from experience. I did it three weeks ago.

We found the normal things—Christmas decorations long forgotten, toys long neglected, and several items of which no one can remember using, much less purchasing. We found not-so-normal things as well. Like the box of notebooks.

You could say I caught the writing bug early; I was filling notebooks before I understood what words were, drawing pictures of the sun and trees and describing them with an jumble of mismatched and incoherent letters. These, sadly, were not in the box.

The high school stuff was.

Lyrics mostly, as if the words to Skid Row’s “18 and Life” and Cinderella’s “Coming Home” were so moving, so utterly profound, that they warranted preservation for the ages.

There were thoughts as well. Plenty of them, all sopping with the angst and shallowness that define the teenage years. Some were laughable in their naivety—“The suddenness of life is a guarantee the soul is eternal.” Others, to my surprise, weren’t so bad at all—“We have lost much of the language of religion, but little of our longing for a faith in something larger than ourselves.”

Memories, all. Not the false ones either, the ones that are saccharine in the remembering. These were more a mixture of sweet and salty, proof that my recollections were true. Regardless, the decision of whether the box was to be discarded or salvaged was an easy one.

It all went to the junk pile save for a single sheet of paper torn from the notebook on top. The last page, as a matter of fact. Written two days before I graduated.

It was a letter. Not to the me I was then, but to the me I am now.

A portion:

“I don’t know who you are (hard to do that, especially since it’s tough enough knowing who I am). I don’t know what you’re doing, either. But I can make the sort of guess with both that people do when they see a falling star or a discarded eyelash, the sort of guess that has a wish at the end. So I’m guessing you’ve made it. I’m guessing you’re rich and famous and happy, and I’m guessing you’re far away. And I figure as long as I guess and wish those things, I’m going to be okay. Because that means I’ll eventually be you.”

I remembered writing that. It was late at night. I was outside, scribbling in my notebook while watching the stars and sneaking a Marlboro red. I remembered how I felt then—sweet and salty, so it must be true—knowing that part of my life was about to fall away and another was ready to begin.

I was afraid. Afraid of the world and my place in it. And in that fear I wrote that night with a sense of purity and honesty that even now I try to capture each time I reach for pen and paper.

I wrote those words in secrecy, and now, all these years later, I snatched them away in secrecy as well. No one saw me stash that letter into my pocket. I’ve kept it since on the top of my office desk, there and not there, like a sickness hidden from a doctor for fear it is a symptom of something more serious.

“So I’m guessing you’ve made it. I’m guessing you’re rich and famous and happy, and I’m guessing you’re far away. And I figure as long as I guess and wish those things, I’m going to be okay. Because that means I’ll eventually be you.”

I couldn’t let those four sentences go. They weren’t supposed to be disposed. They were supposed to be salvaged. I needed to answer myself.

Today is my birthday. I suppose by some sort of twisted logic, that’s why I waited until now to send a note of my own back in time. After all, birthdays are much like graduations. They are a falling away and a beginning.

So on my porch this morning in front of the mountains and the birds and the rising sun, I wrote this:

“I’m not rich. I’m not famous. And though twenty-five years separate us in time, only five miles separate us in distance. But I’ve found things greater than those, and I’ve become happy in the finding. Because the things you search for as a child are not the things you stumble upon as an adult, and thank God for that.”

How bad do you want it?

January 20, 2014 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

It’s amazing how many conversations I have with people that end up with them saying, “Well, I’m working on a book, too.”

I met one such person at the local bookstore last week. Nice fella. Rooting around the reference section and about to pick up a copy of On Writing, by Stephen King. We got to talking. Sure enough, he’s a writer. Has two manuscripts sitting in the top drawer of his desk back home. Funky stories, full of zombies and whatnot. They’re good, he promised. I didn’t doubt they were. He has dreams of agents and publishers and auctions and signings, all of which will happen as soon as he sends those manuscripts off. That’s the problem. He can’t seem to get either of them out of the drawer.

I nodded. He explained that deep down, he’s afraid an agent or editor just won’t understand the depths of his writing. I nodded again. Happens all the time, he said, and then he held up the book in his hand and asked if I knew how many times King had been rejected before he made it big, or Grisham, or Rowling. I said I didn’t but guessed it was a lot. He nodded gravely and whispered, “Oh yeah. A LOT. I can’t handle that, dude.”

He bought the book. Saw him in line a little while later, thumbing through the first few pages and nodding as he soaked up Mr. King’s words.

I couldn’t really think bad of him. I was that man once. I think we all are in a way. Doesn’t matter who we are or how old we happen to be, we all have dreams. We might not act upon them, but they’re there. We have all at some point sat in the middle of our lives, looked around, and said, “There’s gotta be more than this.” That’s my theory—none of us really want a lot, we just want a little more than what we have.

But the thing is this: often, that little more we want requires a lot. A lot of risk, a lot of work, a lot of sacrifice. In the end, that’s what separates the ones who manage to reach their goals from the ones who don’t. Sure, talent plays a part. But talent can only get you so far. My friend in the bookstore may be the next Tolstoy, but none of us will ever know. Writing is easy. It’s sending it out into the world that’s hard. It’s wanting it bad enough. And when I come across people like that, I think of Wayne.

I met Wayne years ago at the boxing gym. Huge guy, hands as fast as lightning. While the rest of us were there to get in shape and occasionally get the snot beaten out of us, Wayne had higher aspirations. He wanted to turn pro. And he wanted it bad.

Trained every day. Fought as often as he could. He racked up wins and knockouts, took on ranked opponents, climbed the ladder. His dedication was inspiring. Having him there made me work harder and sweat more. There was no doubt in my mind he’d make it.

Wayne worked construction during the day, said it kept him in shape. He was two months away from the biggest fight of his amateur career when an accident mangled the ring finger of his right hand. The doctor said he’d need surgery, followed by a few weeks of rest. And absolutely, positively no training.

The fight would have to be cancelled. No telling how long it would be to reschedule. Wayne’s dream of turning pro hung in the balance. So he did what he had to do.

He cut his finger off.

Nope, not kidding. Did it himself in his garage one evening. Trained left-handed for the next week, had his fight. He won.

That’s what it takes to succeed. It’s the only way. Doesn’t matter if it’s writing or boxing or college or a new career. You have to want it, and then you have to go get it with a mindset that says you’ll get up every time you’re knocked down. You won’t surrender. Ever forward, never back.

Even if it means losing pieces of yourself along the way.

The big four-oh

July 5, 2012 by Billy Coffey 17 Comments

I’ve never been much on birthdays. Only two stand out—my sixteenth, because it promised the freedom of driving, and my eighteenth, because it promised the freedom of most everything else. The rest? Meh.

But tomorrow I turn forty. Forty feels different. Like it should mean a little more than the little my birthdays usually mean.

I find this a bit unsettling. Thanks to the marvel that is modern medical technology, age shouldn’t (and really even doesn’t) matter much anymore. I’ve heard the forty is the new thirty. I hope that proves true. But there is still that nagging thought in my mind that to be forty was to be elderly only a few centuries ago, and it was downright ancient a few centuries before that.

I feel fine. Let’s get that out of the way. I’m healthy. I’m in good shape. All my parts work. And aside from an occasional popping sound in my left knee whenever I stand and a little tug in my shoulder when the weather is cool and damp, I feel no different at forty than at twenty. Sure, I’m losing hair in all the right places and gaining it in all the wrong ones. But I’ve been doing that since I was eighteen.

There’s a ballgame on as I write this. Yankees vs. Rays. Perfect way to spend an afternoon, until I realize that I’m much closer to the age of the managers than I am the players.

If I really get to the heart of the matter—“To the brass tacks,” as the old farts around here say—I’d say that my apprehension of entering a new decade has less to do with age and more to do with field placement. Think of life as a football field. I read recently that the life expectancy of a healthy American is about eighty. If that’s true, I am currently standing at the fifty yard line.

Tomorrow, I’ll be halfway to the end zone.

I know, I know. Such things aren’t really all that exact. I could live to be a hundred. I might not see fifty. But that’s not really what I mean. What I mean is that chances are good that I’ve lived half of my life.

It’s moments like this that make a person take stock of things. Call it a mental and spiritual inventory, a tallying of goods and services. As in—what good have I done? What bad? And are those scales balanced, or are they leaning in one way or the other?

Have I lived a good life?

Have I been a good and faithful servant?

Honestly? I’d say those scales are balanced. Maybe leaning a bit the wrong way, but just a bit. I’m still young enough to try to be a good person, but I’m old enough to know there are no good people, there’s just grace and hard trying.

I wish I could have done more in the first half of my life. I wish I could have done less. Such is what it means to be alive.

Me, I’m hoping the next forty years are spent wiser than the first. I think the way to do that is to ask God every day what I did wrong, what I did right, and what I can do better tomorrow.

Maybe I should have been asking that all along.

A wonderful long evening

March 26, 2012 by Billy Coffey 9 Comments

Superman I write this late on a Friday night. A cool March breeze is wafting through the open window, bringing with it the smell of fresh cut grass and green spring leaves. The creek outside gurgles, mixing with the songs of frogs and crickets. I imagine them lullabies, and it’s working. Because between you and me, I don’t think I’ve ever been this tired in my life.

Why you ask? Easy. My son had a birthday party this evening. Seven eight-year-old boys gathered together on this small plot of earth, mouths rambling, bodies jittery, their little minds propelled by youth and cupcakes. And me, one tired man who trudged home after a long day at work, tasked with keeping them all both occupied and out of trouble.

So we played kickball. We played dodgeball. We threw acorns in the creek, wrestled, raced, taunted, ate, belched, laughed, and pondered the eternal mystery that is the opposite sex. And when all of that was done, the entire party devolved into one ginormous water gun fight.

To this thirty-nine-year-old who works two jobs and had beaten the sun out of bed this morning, the whole thing was a little bit of heaven with an equal measure of hell.

But I did it anyway, and without complaint. Because this was my boy. This was my buddy.

This was my son.

It’s funny what kids do to you. A lot of people say you change when you become a parent, but I don’t think that’s completely true. I think children just show you who you really were all along, deep down, past all the pretense we tend to pile upon ourselves.

I think that’s what happened with me, anyway. That’s what my son did. He became a mirror that I hold up to myself every day. He’s shown me who I really am.

Before him, I never knew I was so small. I never paused to consider just how many things I did not know, things like what makes the sun shine and how the moon got there and where yesterday goes when today comes. Until he came along, I thought there was nothing in the world that could scare me or leave me worrying. Before him, I thought I was mere steps below Superman.

But then he came, and I realized I was a lot less than I believed myself to be. I was not perfect. I was not smart. And I most certainly was nowhere close to Superman.

And you know what? That’s okay. Because my son hasn’t just shown me how small I am. He’s shown me how big I am, too.

Without him I would have never known that I could heal scrapes with a simple kiss. Or that my talents with Legos could appear as genius. I would have never guessed that a simple bedtime story could inspire imagination.

I had no idea that I could be someone’s hero.

And yet that’s what he’s done, every minute of every day, for eight beautiful years.

So yes, I’m tired. It’s been a long evening.

A wonderful long evening.

A letter to my daughter

January 18, 2012 by Billy Coffey 16 Comments

Dear Babygirl,

I’m looking at the clock on the wall now (you know that clock, the one with the angels you say are like the ones that watch over you), and it says it’s almost 1:00. Almost 1:00 on January 18. I know the date means a lot to you—birthdays are like that—but it’s the time that I’m holding onto now. Because as I see it, for the next twelve minutes and thirty-seven seconds, you’ll still be nine years old. When 1:05 rolls around, you’ll be ten.

Ten.

Honestly, that’s hard for me to wrap my head around. It’s a big deal, turning double digits. In the words of your grandfather, you’re “Gettin up there.” True. But I think you’ve been gettin up there for a while now, and it just takes days like this for me to really see it. To really see the person you’re becoming.

I’ll admit it isn’t easy, watching you grow. There are times when I want to put my hand atop your head and push down as hard as I can in the hopes you’ll stay small forever. Sometimes I think it would be better that way. Sometimes I think that you’d do well to never have to grow up and see this world for what it truly is, that it would be best if you continued to think everyone always got along and everything always turned out right. But I know that can’t happen. We’re all meant for greater things, you especially, and that means having to go through a little bit of the darkness on the way to the light. No worries there, though. But I’ll get to that.

I figure since you’re double digits and all, I can maybe say some things you have thus far in your life not been privy to. I remember I was about your age when I realized my father wasn’t a super hero. He wasn’t really the smartest man in the world, or the strongest, or even the toughest. He was just a man. That’s a hard thing for ten-year-old to accept. Harder for me, because I had to find all that out on my own. But since being a parent is all about turning your own mistakes around so that your kids won’t have to stumble into those same holes, I’m going to help you out with that. Call it an extra present, one that will go well with the notebooks and pens and books you unwrapped this morning before school.

Ten years ago tomorrow, your mother and I brought you home for the first time. And though you don’t know this—and maybe could never believe it—I was scared to death. I didn’t know how to be a father. I’d asked around plenty—asked both your grandfathers, asked friends, strangers, preachers, anyone—but usually the only bit of advice I received was a wry smile and something along the lines of, “Don’t worry about it. You’ll know what to do.”

I didn’t know what to do.

Which was how I found myself awake all night, creeping over to your bassinet to prod and poke your little body just to make sure you were still breathing.

I’ve gotten a little better over the years, but you know what? I’m still scared. Scared every day. I don’t think that’s a bad thing (I think a lot of kids would be better off if their parents were a little more afraid for them), but it’s something you need to know. Because I’m not a super hero, either. I’m just a man.

But I’m a man who loves you. And I dare say no other man in the world could ever love you more.

You remember that. Keep it close. Guard it. Because the world is coming, and the world’s the kind of thing that will let you stroke it until it purrs and then turn and bite you for no reason. It takes faith to get by in this life, faith and hope and love. You have all of those things. I’ll make sure you always do, just like I’ll always make sure the monsters aren’t under your bed and the ghosts aren’t in your closet.

Because that’s what good fathers do.

Happy birthday.

Love,

Daddy