Signs of a season change
October 4, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 18 Comments
WARNING!!! DO NOT OPEN THIS DRAWER UNLESS YOU ARE MOMMY. ANYONE WHO OPENS THIS DRAWER WHO IS NOT MOMMY WILL BE IN TROUBLE!!!
Taped to the top left drawer of my daughter’s dresser. Saw it last night when I checked to make sure she was sleeping. Written in yellow highlighter, in all caps, and with a total of six exclamation points.
It seemed her point was clear enough. Do not open. Unless you’re Mommy. Off limits to both her father and her little brother. The latter was understandable—big sisters do not want their little brothers going through their things. But the latter was me, and my daughter was not in the habit of hiding things from her daddy.
So I was faced with a conundrum that felt more deep and profound than to merely look or not. It was more than that. It was to invade my child’s privacy or make sure she didn’t have anything in her drawer she wasn’t supposed to. Not likely (not likely at all, really), since she’s never been one to do something she shouldn’t. But still, it ate at me.
I would like to say here that I did not look then. I left the note untouched, tucked the blankets around my little girl, and went to bed. I tossed. I turned. I thought and wondered.
Given what the piece of paper said, I felt sure my wife knew what was in my daughter’s dresser drawer. She was asleep, though. I couldn’t wake her. That doesn’t mean my conscience prohibited it—by then I’d realized I would never be able to get to sleep until I knew, and by then I’d convinced myself whatever my daughter was hiding had to be important—but that I literally could not wake her. I shook her and called her name and kicked her under the covers.
My wife didn’t move. Teachers are often tired.
Which meant there was only one thing left to do.
So I got out of bed. Walked from our room into my daughter’s, checked to make sure she was still asleep, and ignored the sign on her dresser drawer.
The small lamp on her nightstand offered just enough light to turn black to shadow. I grabbed the first thing I felt, turned around, and held it up to the light.
A sock. Tried again. Another sock.
I rifled through what I could, looking for…well, I didn’t know what I was looking for. Something other than socks, I guess. I pulled out T shirts, old birthday cards, some chapstick, and a misplaced Barbie.
The something stuffed on the bottom in the back of the drawer felt like neither sock nor T shirt. I pulled it out, turned, held it up to the light, and nearly fell down.
Sweet fancy Moses, Holy Mother of God, Matthew Mark Luke and John, it was a bra.
For my daughter. My nine-year-old daughter.
I dropped it. Thankfully, it was little more than a sliver of cotton that weighed all of three ounces. It made no sound on the carpet. I stood there with it in front of me, leering at me, taunting, saying, “Ha! Didn’t expect that, did you?” to me. I looked from It to her, the little girl sleeping in the bed.
I wondered what had happened and how it had happened.
Sometime—recently or not, though I hoped it had been moments and not months—a season had changed in my daughter’s life. We gauge our passing through this life by years. Seasons would be better. Because sometimes we languish in inner winters, sometimes we burst forth to a new springlife, sometimes we rest in the sunshine, and sometimes we fall.
Years do not matter. Seasons do.
It was now springtime for my daughter. I prayed that didn’t mean I was to suffer winter.
I picked up the bra and settled it back into the drawer, mindful to next time pay heed to the warnings she posted. I gathered the covers tight around her. She opened sleepy eyes and smiled at my sight.
“Hey Daddy,” she said.
“Hey back.”
“What are you doing?”
“Checking on you.”
She smiled again. “I like it when you check on me.”
I kissed her head and said, “I’ll always check on you.”
And I will. No matter the season.
A weight too heavy to carry
September 5, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
“Daddy, can you carry this? It’s too heavy.”
My daughter. She trails behind her a sack of what may be Barbie dolls, or maybe laundry. I can’t tell from where I sit. I can, however, tell she’s right. It’s too heavy.
“Sure thing.”
I get up and make my way over, but not before turning the channel on the television. Just in time, too. My daughter craned her neck toward it at just the next moment. She got an eyeful of Sportscenter rather than an eyeful of the latest bloodshed.
I bent down and grabbed her sack—Barbies after all.
“Where’m I taking this?” I ask her.
“To my room.”
I nod and shoulder the load. “Lead on, MacDuff.”
She takes one more look at the television, says “Sorry about the Yankees, Daddy,” and then blazes a path down the hallway toward her room.
“That was Shakespeare, you know,” I tell her. “The MacDuff thing.”
Unimpressed with my literary knowledge, she merely nods and says, “That’s nice.” I know something else is on her mind. Something else is always on her mind. I deliver Barbie and the rest of her clan to the safety of her bed, ask her if there’s anything else I can do for her, and park myself back in front of the television.
I push the button on the remote control that says Previous. Sportscenter disappears in a blaze of pixels that reforms into the rest of the evening news.
It’s a habit I’ve repeatedly tried to break, this news watching. I’ve reached the point where I can bear no more and have decided to test the theory that ignorance truly is bliss. Little of what I see on the television is ever felt in my quiet corner of the world. Things here go much as they always have, slowly and with little change. But a part of me feels it is my responsibility to know what’s happening. There is a sense that I must bear witness to these times, if only to pray that God will deliver us from them.
I see a pair of eyes peek at me from around the corner, small eyes full of questions. They grow into my daughter’s face. I push the button again. Back to sports.
“What you need, sweets?” I ask.
“Nothing.”
“Sure?”
She is not, and so walks into the living room and sits beside me. Says, “What were you watching, Daddy?”
“Just some sports.”
“No,” she says. “Before.”
I have the feeling she knows exactly what I was watching, which means I can either lie or tell her the truth. It’s not good to lie to your children. Necessary at times, but still not good.
“I was just watching a little of the news.”
“How come you always turn the news off when I’m around?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her. “You’d probably think it was boring stuff.” It’s a lie. Like I said, such things are necessary at times.
“I don’t think it’s boring. I like to know stuff.”
She leans her head on my shoulder and we laugh at the commercial on the screen. Mine is a tired chuckle, the sort that’s given more out of expectation than genuine feeling. I suppose my thoughts were more on the newscast than the humor. Hers, though? Complete and joyous, a laugh unencumbered.
The laugh of a child.
“You know that sack I carried to your room?” I ask her. “How it was too heavy for you to carry?”
She nods against my shoulder.
“That’s sort of why I don’t like you watching the news. Your sack was too heavy for your muscles, right?”
Nod.
“Your spirit has muscles, too. Some things on the news, they’re too heavy for you to carry right now. That comes later, when you’re older and stronger. Then you can carry all of that. But for now, I think you should just carry the lighter things. I’ll carry the heavy things for you.”
I kiss her on the head, a sign she understands means that’s all I can stay. My daughter lingers long enough for the commercials to end, then she skips back to her room and her Barbies.
I don’t know if she understands what I’ve just told her. Maybe that is too heavy for her as well. A part of me hopes it is.
My finger rests on Previous, and I realize it’s done so by habit. News, always news. Another set of eyes from the hallway, these the smaller ones of my son. He asks if we can watch cartoons. I tell him yes.
There will be no more news tonight, and I decide that’s a good thing.
Because there are still many things even too heavy for a father to carry.
***
This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Innocence, hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To read more on this topic, please visit him at PeterPollock.com.
Selling memories
June 13, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 7 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
(This story was originally posted back in January, 2011.)
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.
This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Home, hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To read more on this topic, please visit him at PeterPollock.com
Jimmy’s long road ahead
May 16, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 29 Comments
There are fewer places more depressing to be nowadays than at the gas station. Especially around here, where those tiny hybrid cars are known as “roller skates” and spoken of in the same mocking tones reserved for liberal politicians and terrorists. Everyone has an SUV here. Or a jacked-up truck. Or both. Having to spend close to a hundred dollars to fill up your tank does not make for a pleasant experience.
It also invites certain periods of discomfort and outright sadness when waiting in line at the cash register. Which is what happened to me the other day. And strangely enough, it had nothing to do with gas.
There were five of us, all lined up in succession in front of a somewhat shaken seventeen-year-old high school cashier who no doubt was tired of being held as the person responsible for the $3.85 per gallon price. That did not stop the farmer at the head of the line from asking how in the world he was supposed to plow his fields with the price of diesel so high, diesel being even more expensive. The cashier shrugged, said “I dunno,” and then offered a qualifying “Sorry, mister.”
Their short conversation would have likely been an interesting one, but my attention then turned to the mother and son in front of me. Both wore the dull layer of weariness common to a hard life, she in her baggy sweatpants and flannel button-up, he in a pair of too-short jeans and a Wrestlemania T-shirt. The mother sighed often—I think it was the deep, tired sigh that drew my attention away from the farmer and the cashier—her hand gripping a twenty dollar bill as if she were trying to squeeze out the ink.
Bored with standing in line, her son wandered away to the candy aisle. Mama’s eyes followed him and then drifted to me. “Hello,” she said. I helloed back.
The boy was back—“Ma, can I have this?”
He held up a bag of Big League Chew, the grape flavored. Not my first choice, as the regular flavored was much better, but still a valid request. Every boy worth his salt is a Big League Chew fan, my own son included. I thought at that moment that maybe I should grab him a bag, too. He’d like that.
“No Jimmy,” said the mother. “That stuff’s too expensive.”
I stole a look at the tiny orange sticker that had been placed just under the batter’s chest on the bag–$1.29.
“Please?”
Rather than answer, mama gripped her twenty harder. But Jimmy wasn’t about to let silence be her final answer.
“Mama?”
The line moved forward. Mr. Farmer Guy was gone now, as was the lady behind him and the man behind her. It was now an elderly man’s turn to excoriate the poor cashier on evil oil companies and corrupt government officials. Mama and Jimmy were next in line, and the question of the Big League Chew was still in the air.
“Mama?”
“No,” she said, and with a sharpness that revealed the hidden facts she was trying to keep from her son. Just one word, one no, that really meant, “Don’t you see that we don’t have the money, that this twenty dollars will maybe get us enough gas to go to the store and back home and you to school tomorrow and then I’ll be on fumes again? Don’t you see?”
But Jimmy didn’t see.
“But Mama…”
“No” again. Then a very sad and very final, “We ain’t got the money.”
The elderly man left—“Damn oil companies” was his parting shot—and mama and Jimmy moved to the register.
The cashier sighed in a here-we-go-again way and said, “You get some gas, ma’am?”
“No,” she said. Jimmy had by then managed to sneak the bag of bubble gum onto the counter in a desperate attempt to somehow leave the store with it, but mama’s eyes caught it.
“I said NO.” She grabbed the bag and held it out. “Take this back,” she told her son. “And do it before I tan your hide.”
I could see the tears in Jimmy’s eyes and thought there were perhaps tears in his mother’s as well, and I thought then that the four of us—mother, son, cashier, and me—were being privy to yet another example that life is unfair. That no matter what we do or how hard we try, some children will always want and some parents will never be able to provide.
“Ma’am?” asked the cashier.
Mother’s attention snapped back to the moment, sighed again. She held out her twenty and said, “I need a pack of Marlboro lights and fifteen Powerball tickets.”
This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Road, hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. For more posts about this topic, please visit him at PeterPollock.com
Adventures in junk mail and maturity
April 18, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 27 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
My mailman—mail lady, actually—says that approximately four out of every seven pieces of mail she delivers to my neighborhood could be classified as junk. She shakes her head at the fact that most of her work goes straight from the mailbox to the garbage can.
I thought about that yesterday while walking to the porch from the mailbox, a handful of letters in my grasp. Most were destined for recycling (I thought the mail lady would somehow feel better knowing that, and I promised myself I’d tell her next time she came around). But even that didn’t seem to do all her hard work justice. So I made it a point to sit and open each and every letter. Read them, even. Then I could toss them away without feeling so guilty.
There was the usual fare—satellite television offers, a flyer from the local furniture store, a newsletter from a church my family visited five years ago.
But it was the last letter that caught my attention. A thick, linen envelope, my name embossed with gold letters on the front. Fancy for junk mail.
The return address was just that—an address. I tore it open and read:
“Dear Friend.”
Not exactly personable. Then again, junk mail never is. But then:
“Whether you realize it or not, you’re a person of influence.”
Well now, that’s more like it.
“You live with passion and purpose”—
I do!
—“encouraging and helping others”—
Yes!
—“and building a legacy for your family and future generations—”
Okay, I’ll buy that.
Way down in the fourth paragraph, I finally realized what they were getting at. It was a magazine advertisement, one “for people just like you” that offered a monthly assortment of “inspiring stories from others like you who deserve to live a hopeful, vibrant life.”
I’ll admit, it sounded interesting. Which is why I actually finished the letter. Then I turned to the inserts (full color, mind you) of sample articles, which to my surprise seemed overly populated by elderly people.
That’s when I discovered the publication’s name.
Mature Living.
And that’s when I discovered exactly what had happened.
I’d just been solicited for an old folks magazine.
I stood there in the middle of my living room, flabbergasted. Surely this was some mistake. Me? No. Surely not. I’m not old. Sure, in the minds of some I could be consider older. But not old. And yeah, I’m a little thin on top, but a lot of guys are, guys younger than me, and besides I have a tattoo and shop at Abercombie & Fitch. Old people don’t do that.
But it still bugged me. My wife said I wasn’t old, though I thought that was likely because she’s older than I am and telling me I was would make her old by proxy. My kids said I was old—“Ancient,” said my daughter—but to them, anyone over twenty is old.
I was at a loss. Why were the people at Mature Living picking on me? My family said to let it go—“Bein’ mad’s not good for your heart, Daddy,” said my daughter—but I couldn’t. So I did what any sane person would do. I called the number at the end of the letter and asked them how they got my name.
It was a lady’s voice on the other end of the line—a young voice, though I suddenly realized that young to me was twenty-five. Megan, she said. Can I help you?
“Yes.” I cleared my throat, suddenly wondering what in the world I was doing. “Megan. Hi. My name is Billy.” (Billy being a very youngish name.) “I just received one of your advertisements in the mail.”
“Wonderful!” said Megan. “Would you like to begin a subscription.”
“No. No Megan, I would not. I just need to know how you got my name. Is there some old people’s database? Do you buy your names from pharmacies or something? Because I picked up a prescription for my dad the other day, and that wasn’t for me.”
Megan didn’t know what to say to that. Didn’t know where the names came from, either.
“Are you sure you don’t want to begin a subscription?” she asked.
“No. I mean yes. Yes, Megan, I am sure. I am not mature. Do you hear me?”
And then I hung up.
I’m not sure what Megan thought of that, but she likely had quite a story to tell during her break.
It’s funny how we think we’re comfortable with who and where we are in this life, and how quickly we are faced with the truth.
I won’t make that mistake again. Next time, all the junk mail’s going straight to the trash.
This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Adventure. To read more adventurous posts, visit my friend Peter Pollock at PeterPollock.com
You only go around once
April 4, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 21 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
A favorite saying of my mother: “You only go ’round this life once.”
Drilled into my head since I was a boy. It was a warning, though one I never truly heeded because it was only partially understood. “You only go ’round this life once” was sort of like my father’s “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” Catchy, but vague.
I’m going to be thirty-nine this summer, which is just close enough to forty to get me worrying. Not that I fret too much about the grinding of the wheels of time. Forty doesn’t mean as much as it used to. In fact, I’ve read that forty is the new thirty. That’s supposed to make me feel better, I suppose. And it does. But still…
It’s fair to say that forty can be considered a good halfway point in most people’s lives. That’s about the point where a lot of us look back over our shoulders and realize there’s a whole lot behind us, then look ahead and swear we can see a speck of something on the horizon. And though death’s great sting isn’t as great as I once thought it to be, I still feel like there’s a lot left for me to do.
And lately I’ve come to realize the gravity of the fact I only go ’round this life once. Time, now, is the issue. Much more now than it’s ever been.
But it’s not just the time I have left to do things I’ve always wanted to do, it’s the time I have left to fix the things I’ve broken. I’ve broken a lot of things in my life. Done things I shouldn’t, said things I shouldn’t. I look back on a lot of my past not in reverie, but in regret. So much so that I now find myself at this magical midpoint thinking a do-over of my first forty years would be nice.
I think about all the time I’ve wasted. Not just wasted by watching television or daydreaming on the front porch, but wasted by worry and fear. Often I realize I have lived vast parcels of my life in reverse and upside down—the things that really should have bothered me never did, and the things that really bothered me were things that didn’t shouldn’t have bothered me at all.
I still act like this. A lot.
But now I’m beginning to realize I shouldn’t, that life is too short and too precious to be mindful of tiny irritations and bothersome fears. The first half of one’s life is viewed through the lens of ourselves—our needs, our wants, our desires. The second half is viewed through the lens of eternity. That’s when we begin to see that as big as this world can seem, it’s really the smallest thing we will ever experience.
I wish I could have figured all of this out earlier. Time and experience have a way of teaching us what we’ve always ignored, though. I spend a lot of my day with people who say if there was a God, He would do something about all of the pain in the world. I tell them I stumble over that sometimes too, but that I also understand if it weren’t for the pains in my own life, I wouldn’t know anything.
That part, at least, I’ve gotten right.
But there is much I haven’t.
It seems a bit pessimistic to be looking ahead at my coming years with the express purpose not to screw them up as badly as I managed the previous ones. That’s what I’m going to do, though. And I’m going to try and love more and worry less. I’m going to try to have faith instead of fear. And I’m going to make the attempt to smile as much in the pain as in the happiness.
Because my mother was right, you only go ’round this life once.
But if you do it right, once is all you’ll need.
Life is a gift to be treasured.
***
This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Treasure hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. For most posts about Treasure, please visit him at PeterPollock.com
Allison
March 7, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 24 Comments
The dedication page from my first novel, Snow Day
I had life figured out by the time I was seventeen. My future was planned, crystal clear and meant to be.
I was the starting second baseman on my high school team and had already received interest from several colleges and even one professional team. I was going to play baseball forever. I had to. Because the kid who roamed the halls of my high school and drove his truck around town wasn’t me. Not the real me, anyway. No, the real me was the guy on the ball field. It was the only place where I ever really felt I belonged.
School was an irritant. Most high school seniors try to stretch out that last year as far as they can, enjoying every moment. Not me. I wanted to get out. I had a life to start living.
Not that high school was hard, mind you. I had the prototypical jock schedule of classes—math, history, English, and four study halls. Brutal. On day my English teacher decided I needed to do something besides sit around all day, so she pulled some strings and got me a job writing a weekly column for the local newspaper. Write about anything, she said. Just make it good.
Oh. Joy.
I obliged, partly because I had to but mostly because she was my favorite teacher. Every Tuesday evening, I would sit down with a pad of paper and write between innings of the Braves games on television. It was busy work, nothing else. Just something to pass the time.
Then everything fell apart.
I blew out my shoulder three weeks later. Trips to doctors and specialists resulted in a shared consensus that though I could kinda/sorta play baseball again, I’d never play the way I had.
It’s tough being seventeen and knowing that every dream you’d ever had was gone. Tough knowing that your entire life lay in front of you, but it wasn’t going to be the life you wanted. Tough.
Too tough.
So one night I got into my truck, drove into the mountains, and found the highest rock I could so I could jump off.
Almost did it, too. I got to two-and-a-half on my count to three when a voice popped into my head and said, “You’re not really afraid of dying, are you?”
No. Not at all.
“Then you’re afraid of living.”
Whether that voice was God’s or my own still escapes me. But I sat for a long while on that rock, thinking. Then I got back into my truck, drove home, and wrote my column. Really wrote. About how things sometimes don’t turn out the way they’re supposed to and how sometimes life can be more night than day. About how, in the end, we all just have to keep on.
That was the night I learned to strip myself bare on the page, to risk exposing fears and worries and doubts. To quit pretending I was someone I wasn’t. It was the biggest act of courage I’d ever displayed.
Three days later, a letter was sent to the high school with my name on the front. Thank you, it said. “I’m having a really tough time right now, and a few days ago I thought I just couldn’t take it anymore. I was going to end it. Then I read your article and, well, I’m still here. So thank you. You rescued me.”
It wasn’t signed, and there was no return address on the envelope. I didn’t know who sent it, but I did know this: God didn’t want me to play baseball. He wanted me to write.
At the mall, a month later. I was picking up my girlfriend from work and decided to walk down to the bookstore. Approaching me was a teenage girl in jeans and a leather jacket. I nodded as she passed, and then she called my name.
“Allison,” she said. “My name’s Allison. I’m the one who wrote you that letter.”
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what she wanted me to say. So I asked if she was all right, to which she replied she was, to which I replied that it was nice to meet her. I was so shy, so backward, so unnerved, that I simply nodded again and walked away.
I have had many bad moments in my life. That one? Top three.
I never saw Allison again. I do, however, still spend many a day wishing that I would have. Just once more. Just to say I’m was sorry for not saying more. To tell her to keep hanging in there and she’s not alone.
And to tell her she rescued me, too.
***
This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Future hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To check out more posts on this topic, please visit his website, PeterPollock.com
Falling Rocks
February 7, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 18 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
The signs are plentiful at the peak of Afton mountain. Big, diamond-shaped yellow signs with capitalized letters in bold black.
WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS.
I tell my kids the same story I was told as a child, and that is the signs are not warnings at all. Long ago there was young Indian girl who had fallen in love with a brave named Falling Rocks. The two were to wed, but Falling Rocks disappeared while on a hunting expedition into the mountains. He was never found. The poor Indian girl mourned her loss to the point of death, then finally passed on after a month of unending tears. The legend states that her ghost still roams the mountains here and will not rest until she finds her lost love. Hence the signs along the roads.
So the tale goes. In reality, large amounts of rain and snow have in the past dislodged chunks of rock, sending them tumbling down onto the roads.
I suppose that’s another instance of fact being more mundane than story. But in this case, the facts are no less instructive.
I’ve been driving over that mountain for years, and I’d never seen one instance of either falling rocks or Indians of the same name. But the past week brought snow to my part of the world that was followed by a day or two of warmer temperatures. The combination resulted in a large boulder rolling down the face of a cliff Saturday morning that came to rest along the shoulder of the road I was driving upon.
I was talking about this to an acquaintance of mine this morning, who also happens to be a biology professor. He said it was a common assumption to think that something as solid as a mountain could never break apart and tumble, but it happens all the time. That’s because mountains really aren’t that solid at all. They’re a part of the earth, floating upon tectonic plates and at the mercy of both gravity and the elements. And like all things in motion, sooner or later parts will tumble.
It’s the same with everything, he told me. All of creation is in motion. And since no motion is perpetual, sooner or later that motion will slow and cease. Rocks, earth, sky, even planets. One day, they will all fall down. Then he smiled and said, “What’s important is to heed the signs and proceed with caution.”
True, I think. Because according to my friend the professor, the first rule of biology is this—nothing lasts.
Even us. One day we will all fall down, too.
He thought that was depressing in a way, though he had long resigned himself to the fate of the universe. But I find a strange sort of comfort in the transience of things. I like knowing all the bad won’t always hover over us and that things like despair and sadness aren’t permanent. They’re destined to all fall down, too.
I always liked that story about Falling Rocks and his forlorn bride. My kids like it, too. I’ve even heard my daughter telling the story to her friends as we rode over the mountains one day. But I think from now on whenever I see those signs, I’ll instead be reminded of what my friend the biologist said.
Whether things are good or bad, they won’t always stay this way. They’ll change, just as the mountains and the planets. Just as we. I don’t think there should be any fear in that. Not as long as we heed the signs and proceed with caution.
This post is part of the One Word at a Time blog carnival: Renewal hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To read more posts about renewal, visit his blog, PeterPollock.com
Jangle, jangle
December 14, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 19 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
My wife sent me to the store forty-five minutes ago. Since it takes only five minutes or so to get there from the house and another five to pick up a gallon of milk, pay for it, and leave, I figure I should have been home about a half an hour ago. But I’m not.
In fact, I haven’t even made it into the store yet. I’ve been stuck near the entrance watching a Salvation Army volunteer.
The boy is maybe ten, and he’s taking his job seriously. A wool cap sits on his head, ski gloves on his hands. His coat is the puffy kind that looks like its made for sub-Arctic temperatures. He needs them all today. It’s cold out here, and the wind is biting.
This is the time of year when the Salvation Army is out in full force. They’re a gracious lot, volunteering their valuable time to help the helpless. They stand out in the cold and ring their bells and say Merry Christmas when you offer a little something to the nearby kettle. Other than that, though, most won’t say much. They have the bell, and the bell is good enough.
Not so for this boy.
His bell is a clarion, a call to say a message is forthcoming and it is something you’d better heed if you know what’s good for you:
JANGLEJANGLE—“Give to the poor folk. They need Jesus, and so do you.”
The “Jesus” comes out more like “Jayzus.” I can see the boy’s breath in the cold December air. It stops mere inches from his mouth and then fades, but the sound carries. It carries far.
Every shopper who approaches the doors must get through him first. He lets no one off the hook.
JANGLEJANGLE—“Give some money, mister. Think of what all you have and the needy folk who have nothing.”
Standing along the wall about ten feet from the boy is an older man. He, too, wears a wool cap and ski gloves and a heavy coat. He’s sipping coffee and watching. The smile on his face tells me who he is.
I ease my way up to him and say, “That’s your boy, ain’t it?”
He nods while sipping and smiles again. “Sure is,” he says.
JANGLEJANGLE—“God wants you to help the poor people, ma’am.”
The ma’am does. She puts five dollars into the kettle and gets a “Merry Christmas!” in return.
“Seems to be doing a pretty good job,” I tell the father.
“That ain’t no lie, buddy,” he says. He nods toward his son. “He told me last night he wanted to come watch, but that didn’t last long. He said I was doin’ it wrong. I told him he could give it a try if he thought he could do better. That was about an hour ago.”
It’s my turn to smile. “You should be proud.”
Another sip, then, “I sure am. He told me he didn’t understand why there had to be poor people. Said it broke his heart. But then he said that maybe there were poor people because not enough people have done something to help. Lots of people blame God for stuff that’s our own fault.”
JANGLEJANGLE—“Hey mister, don’t you wanna help the poor?”
I suppose some could say the boy’s methods are all wrong. Rather than appeal to whatever inward sense of charity people have, he prods them—and maybe even guilts them—into giving.
But honestly? I’m good with that. Jesus once said that the poor will always be with us, and that’s the sort of thing that can make it easy for us to pass them over. “Let someone else help,” we say. “I have too many problems of my own.” So I don’t mind his prodding and guilting. It forces people to do something about the state of the world. Sometimes it’s good to feel shame.
Me, I’m with the boy. I don’t understand why there has to be poor people, either. It upsets me right along with him. The heart is broken upon the sight of that which contradicts what we know God desires.
But maybe instead of blaming Him, we should all do something about it.
I wish the father a good day and make my way inside. On the way, I drop my own contribution into the kettle. Not enough, I know that. But a start.
“God loves you, mister,” the boy says.
Yes. And God loves him, too.
This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Rejoice hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. To read more posts on the topic of Rejoicing, please visit his blog, PeterPollock.com
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.
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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