Billy Coffey

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Welcoming the storm

February 16, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

The snow storm has arrived.
The snow storm has arrived.

There’s a storm coming. No one around here needs to turn on the news to know this, though if they would, they’d be greeted with an unending stream of weather updates and projected snowfall totals. “Gonna be a bad one, folks,” the weatherman said a bit ago. But I knew that when I walked outside. It was the way the sun hung low in a heavy, gray sky, and how the crows and cardinals and mockingbirds sounded more panicked than joyful. It was the five deer coming out of the woods and the raccoon in the backyard, how they foraged for enough food to last them these next few days.

We are no strangers to winter storms here. Still, it is cause for some interesting scenes. There are runs on bread and milk, of course, and salt and shovels, and there must be kerosene for the lamps and wood for the fire and refills for whatever medications, an endless stream of comings and goings, stores filled with chatter—“Foot and a half, I hear,” “Already coming down in Lexington”—children flushing ice cubes and wearing their pajamas inside out as offerings to the snow gods.

It is February now. The Virginia mountains have suffered right along with the rest of the country these past months. We’ve shivered and shook and dug out, cursed the very snow gods that our children entreat to give them another day away from school. Winter is a wearying time. It gets in your bones and settles there, robbing the memory of the way green grass feels on bare feet and the sweet summer smell of honeysuckled breezes. It’s spring we want, always that. It’s fresh life rising up from what we thought was barren ground. It’s early sun and late moon. It’s the reminder that nothing is ever settled and everything is always changing.

But there’s this as well—buried beneath the scowls of having to freeze and shovel, everywhere I go is awash with an almost palpable sense of excitement. Because, you see, a storm is coming. It’s bearing down even now, gonna be a bad one, folks, I hear a foot and a half, and it may or may not already be coming down in Lexington.

We understand that sixteen inches of snow will be an inconvenience. We know the next day or two will interrupt the otherwise bedrock routine we follow every Monday through Friday. And yet a part of us always welcomes interruptions such as these, precisely because that’s what they do. They interrupt. They bring our busy world to a halt. They slow us down and let us live.

Come Tuesday morning, I expect to see a world bathed in white off my front porch. I expect to put aside work and worry and play instead. I’ll build a snowman and a fort. I’ll throw snowballs and play snow football and eat snowcream. I’ll put two feet so cold they’ve gone blue by the fire and sip hot chocolate. I’ll laugh and sigh and ponder and be thankful. For a single day, I’ll be my better self.

That’s the thing about storms. We seldom welcome them, sometimes even fear them. Too often, we pray for God to keep them away. Yet they will come anyway, and to us all. For that, I am thankful. Because those storms we face wake us up from the drowse that too often falls over our souls, dimming them to a dull glow, slowly wiping away the bright shine they are meant to have.

Filed Under: beauty, change, encouragement, living, nature, perspective, winter

Why I’m saying goodbye

September 9, 2014 by Billy Coffey 4 Comments

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

Some friends of ours moved last week. Traded one set of blue mountains for a set of rocky ones. It’s something they’ve wanted to do for a while (he has family in Colorado, not twenty miles from their new home, and she grew up in nearby Boulder). Their move had less to do with the economy than a simple desire for a change of scenery. I nodded when they told me that, but I didn’t really understand. Who would want to leave rural Virginia?

I’ve known them for about fifteen years now. They’ve been to my home, I’ve been to theirs. We’ve shared meals and Christmas presents and birthday parties for our children. It’s a sad thing that in a world defined by hustle and bustle and there’s-always-something-going-on, few people slow down enough to make good friends. That’s what I’d call them—good friends.

But they’re gone now, a thousand miles westward. They will find new lives, and I will keep my old one.

Their leaving was a bit anti-climactic. That surprised me. I suppose deep down I knew what I had yet to consider, which was that they’d still be around. There’s the phone, of course. E-mail. Facebook and Twitter. Skype. No matter that two mountain ranges and a great big river separated us, they’d still be no more than a few button pushes away.

That’s when I realized how much the world has shrunk. Never mind that our technology has made it possible to cure disease and peer into the deepest reaches of the universe and know within moments what has happened in a tiny spot across the world. It has done something more profound than all of those things together.

It has lifted from us the heavy weight of ever having to say goodbye.

I’ve read stories of families separated during the Great Depression, of parents and children cleaved apart as some remained behind and others struck out for new territories and better hope. They had to say their goodbyes. Many were never heard from again. Can you imagine?

I remember looking around at my classmates during high school graduation and thinking that I’d never see or hear from most of them again. These were friends, many of whom I’d known since third grade. They’d shared my life, I’d shared theirs. Yet as I sat there I knew all of that was slipping away. I knew that to live was not about being born and dying later, it was to endure many births and suffer many deaths, and sometimes that birth and death happens in the same moment.

I was right. Twenty years later, I’ve not seen many of them. But more than one have friended me on Facebook, and from all over the world.

This should make me feel good, I guess. Aside from death, there are no farewells now. There is always “Talk to you soon” or “Shoot me an email” or “DM me.”

But I don’t feel particularly good. I think we’re missing out on something if we never have to say goodbye anymore. I think it robs us of the necessity of truly understanding the impact some people have on our lives, and the impact we have on the lives of others. To have to say goodbye is to know a part of you is leaving or staying, either scattered through the world or planted where you are.

I say this because just a bit ago, I received an email (plus pictures) from my friends. Things are well with them. They’re settling in and getting used to things. They’re happy. And that’s good.

But rather than casually shooting an email back, I think I’ll sit down and take my time. I think I’ll treat it as a farewell, even though it isn’t. I think I’ll tell them just how much I’ll miss them even though it’ll be as if we’re still just down the road from each other.

I figure somewhere deep down, they’ll need that goodbye. I know I do.

Filed Under: change, distance, friends, social media, technology, writing

The cosmic dance

August 14, 2014 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

What I’ve been thinking lately:

My little town isn’t so little anymore. Its population has boomed in the last twenty years from about three thousand to right around ten thousand people. The old two-lane road is now four. The lone stoplight we used to have has somehow given birth to five more. And there seems to always be a new subdivision being built in an old cornfield.

Ask the business owners, and they’ll say all this growth is a good thing. Ask the old timers, and they’ll tell you that it isn’t so good. The town’s growing, they say, but the community is shrinking. There’s a difference, and it’s a big one. I used to have to drive down Main Street with my hand perpetually stuck in the wave position. Not so much anymore. There are a lot of people I don’t know. Which means you can be surrounded by people and still feel lonely sometimes.

Many have come from the south and west in search of work, but most have come from the north. That fact alone was cause for concern for a lot of people here, those old in both age and ways and who still smart from the last time the Yankees invaded. But those times are over. These new Yankees do not have violence on their minds, but retirement. They’re tired of the cities and the noise. They want the peace and quiet of the country.

So they come. They buy their houses and settle in with the expressed purpose to slow down and take things easier. To force their lives not to be so hectic. “We’re always moving,” one of them told me the other day. “It’s just this constant state of having to do something. We hated it. So we came here. We just wanted to slow down and stop.”

I tried not to smile, but I did anyway.

This once-sleepy town is no Nirvana. It offers much, but not stoppage. Because the fact of life is that it’s busy and we’re always moving.

It doesn’t seem fair, really. As children, all we want is to go. Doesn’t matter to where or for what or how long, just as long as it’s somewhere. But the years wear on us. There are responsibilities. There is work and family and goals and dreams and we’re in the middle of it all, running. Moving. We long to slow down and stop not because we’re lazy, but because we’re tired. And because at some point we begin wondering if this is really all life has to offer, just more moving and more doing and never any rest.

I’ve wondered that myself lately. And I think that maybe the answer to that is no. Maybe that’s all life is. Movement.

I read the other day that the Earth spins on its axis every twenty-four hours at a speed of 1,000 mph. Pretty fast, isn’t it? Not as fast as this planet’s speed around the Sun, though. That’s 66,000 mph. So technically speaking, that means even though you think you’re sitting still and reading this right on the other side of a computer screen, you’ve traveled six hundred miles since you began reading this paragraph.

No wonder we’re always so tired.

I suppose that from the universe’s standpoint, not only is there not much we can do about our constant moving, we should be thankful there isn’t. Moving means life, and life continuing. It means that the Earth spins and the sun shines and all is well. It means that the cosmic dance continues unfettered.

Maybe that’s how we should look at our hectic lives. Because no matter who we are, it’s hard to slow down. Those precious moments of rest and nothingness are precious because they’re so few. I think that’s how it should be.

We can’t help but to move, but we can help how we move.

We can make sure our comings and goings are ordained by God Himself, that our actions, however small, are made as a prayer to Him and a help to others.

Yes. That’s it. That’s what we need.

Not less moving, but better moving.

That the cosmic dance continues unfettered.

Filed Under: change, choice, endurance, human nature, journey, living

Starting over

July 17, 2014 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

I last saw Joey five years ago, just before he started over. He was a mess back then. Thin and shaky and unkempt. A shadow of the man who was once a boy I called a friend. He was still sick. Still “fighting the bear,” as he called it. He was in the pit, yes. But at least he was looking up toward the light. For the first time in nearly ten years, he was smiling.

His life had followed the same downward spiral that more and more people in this area had taken before him. Booze had turned to pills and pills to meth. He had no idea that the foggy paradise he thought he’d found was in reality a grave that was being dug around him. I’m not sure what finally managed to take hold of him as he tottered on the edge of an eventual overdose, whether it was his wife and kids finally leaving him or getting fired from his job. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was God. Whatever it was, it worked. That Something grabbed hold of Joey and refused to let go.

He entered counseling. AA and NA and nearly every other A you could imagine. Joey made his peace and asked for forgiveness and learned to rely on a Higher Power. The road to healing was a slow process and a brutal one, but then the road to all good things usually is.

“I need to start over,” he told me that day.

He was moving. Away from the temptations that had nearly killed him and had cost him so much. West. Colorado maybe, or maybe Montana. Joey had always loved the mountains, and the Rockies seemed the place to go.

“You know how the mountains here are smooth?” he asked me. “It’s because they’re old. They’ve been worn down by time. The Rockies aren’t like that. They’re still sharp. I’m tired of feeling worn. I want to be sharp again.”

So he left, taking that winding path West that so many once trod in search of freedom and a better life. I understood. We all needed to start over sometimes. And we all yearned for a new place to do it, a place where our sins wouldn’t follow and we could be judged by who we’ve become rather than who we once were.

I told him to keep in touch and he did. There were emails and phone calls and even an old fashioned letter or two. Doing good, he said. Weather’s perfect, he said. Joey found work and a home and bought a dog to keep him company, a Siberian husky with one blue eye and one brown one. He named him Crackhead.

The Rockies soon lost their appeal, though. As it turned out, there was just as much temptation out West as there had been down South. Joey wrote to say he was heading for Alaska to find work on a fishing boat. He’d always wanted to do that.

The years went on. Emails and phone calls stopped. I thought nothing of it. Time and life often get in the way of friendships like currents that push ships apart and send them on separate courses upon the same ocean. I was here and he was there, and somehow that knowing alone made things okay.

I was catching up with an old friend last week when Joey’s name came up. I wondered aloud whatever had happened to him.

“You didn’t hear?” my friend asked. “Joey died a year ago.”

I didn’t want to believe it, but it was true. He’d heard the news from Joey’s mother just after it had happened. They’d found him in his apartment. The needle was still in his arm.

I thought about Joey today. No reason, really. Sometimes things just pop into your head, memories that you haven’t quite sorted out and found reason in yet.

All Joey wanted was a chance to start over. To leave his problems behind. Most addicts are like that, I think. They’re prisoners unto themselves, chained by a desire that goes beyond want and straight into need. They hate what they do as much as the people who love them hate it. They hate it more.

But there is a catch to starting over, and it’s this—no matter where we go, we always take ourselves with us. And not just our hopes and our dreams. Our frailties and our wounds, too.

Filed Under: addiction, burdens, change, failure, trials

The banner still waves

July 4, 2014 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

image courtesy of photo bucket.com
image courtesy of photo bucket.com

I’ve heard there are grumblings that “The Star Spangled Banner” should be removed as our national anthem. It’s too antiquated, those grumblings say. And the words are not only hard to understand, but hard to sing. What kind of national anthem do you have if it’s hard to sing?

And to tell you the truth, some of those grumblings are right. I’ve heard the anthem positively butchered by well-meaning folks who were simply mystified by the phrase “O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.” I couldn’t sing that, either.

That isn’t to say, though, that I’m all for replacing the words of Mr. Francis Scott Key with “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee” or “America the Beautiful.” I’m not. I like things the way they are just fine. Not because I love our anthem. Not because I love the words.

But because it’s endured.

We are a people who look ever forward. Hope and change are our new touchstones, and neither of those are readily found by glancing over our shoulders. No, the promised land of better times lies ahead. Just there, over the horizon.

We say that the past doesn’t matter, just the future. Not where we’ve been, but where we’re going. And while that may be correct in some aspects, it isn’t in others. In many ways the future is dependant upon the past, and you don’t know where you’re going unless you take a look behind to see where you’ve been.

That’s true in both the life of a person and the life of a country. We are not the product of our tomorrows, but our yesterdays. The freedoms we enjoy may be sustained by the continued sacrifice and vigilance of today, but they were granted by the courage of those who have gone before us. Men who held firm to the believe that freedom was worth persecution and that death should be favored over oppression.

Men who put country and people ahead of party and self. Who believed leaders were not above the public but subject to them.

Who believed that the ultimate authority was not themselves, but God.

That we continue to cling to what some see as a worn and outdated song for our national anthem is to be reminded that there was a time in our country when such men existed. Perhaps that’s why there is this slight but steady push to modernize the singing of praise for our country. It will help us cope with the knowledge that such men seem to be more difficult to find now.

Whereas our leaders of yesterday are revered, our leaders today are ridiculed. Our trust with those first great Virginians, Washington and Jefferson and Madison, have been replaced by a mistrust for those who lead us today. This, I suppose, is inevitable. The natural consequence of favoring a winning smile and a photogenic face over substance and wisdom.

Those ideas of freedom and liberty that inflamed the hearts and minds of our forefathers seem to have burned to embers now. What caused them to stand and fight now allows us to sit and rest.

So this Fourth of July weekend when we’re surrounded by the present and looking forward to the future, perhaps it would do us well to pause and look back, far back, and remember the kind of people it took to found this country. Because that is exactly the kind of people we need in order to continue it.

Let the words be sung, and let that flame of freedom and liberty ignite again. Let us all make sure that when the question is asked, “O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?” the answer will always be yes.

Filed Under: ancestry, change, endurance, patriotism

Gettin’ dark

May 22, 2014 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

image courtesy of photo bucket.com
image courtesy of photo bucket.com
I said, “You know Davey, this is why Southerners are stereotyped.”

“Don’t know nothin’ about that,” he answered, “just know I gotta clean this. Gettin’ dark, you know.”

I looked at the sunshine splayed over his front yard and still didn’t know what Davey meant by that. So I said, “Just heard a song on the radio that pretty much summed up what you’re trying to do here.”

“Well, if that song was about some guy sittin’ on his porch cleanin’ his shotgun, then I’d say it’s spot on.”

I nodded and said nothing because there wasn’t anything else to say. So I just sat in the rocking chair beside him and watched his grass grow.

In the country a person learns to decipher the hidden meanings found in the common wave. There are many. Depending upon the angle of the arm and the length of the waggle, a gesture by people from their porch can mean anything from “Stop on in and sit a spell” to “If you don’t keep moving, I’m going to shoot you.”

That’s why when I passed Davey Robinson’s house and observed the angle and the waggle of his wave, I stopped. The invite was there, even if the words weren’t.

I climbed onto Davey’s porch and saw the oil and the rags next to his shotgun. Not an uncommon sight in these parts. We take the second amendment with the utmost seriousness. When I asked what he was doing, Davey simply said, “It’s gettin’ dark.”

Davey’s wife poked her head out of the screen door just then. “Hey, Billy,” she said.

“Afternoon Rachel,” I answered.

She looked at her husband. “Davey, this is the last time I’m going to tell you. Put that stuff away.”

“Almost done,” Davey told her.

“Well, hurry up. Caitlyn’s almost ready.”

“What’s Caitlyn up to?” I asked them.

Davey said nothing. Rachel, however, did: “It’s prom night.”

I looked at Davey and smiled. “You’re actually cleaning your gun for Caitlyn’s prom?”

“It’s dirty,” he answered. “I’d be cleanin’ it no matter what Caitlyn’s doin’.”

Uh-huh.

“Honey, please,” Rachel said. “Put that stuff away. If Caitlyn sees you, she’ll go bonkers.”

“Gettin’ dark,” Davey said again.

Rachel rolled her eyes and went back inside, leaving the two of us alone on the porch.

“Caitlyn’s going to prom, huh?” I asked. “Seems like just a few months ago she was still running around here in pigtails.”

“Don’t I know it,” Davey said, running a cloth through the barrel. “I enjoyed every minute of it, too. Guess growin’ up was bound to happen sooner or later, though. This prom thing has been goin’ through her mind for months. Wasn’t much I could do about it.”

“Who’s her date?”

“Guy named Kevin. She’s had him over a few times. Seems like a good enough kid.”

“If he’s a good enough kid,” I said, “then why are you out here sittin’ on the porch with your shotgun? I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

Davey paused with his rag and said, “Fine, huh? Tell me, what sorts of stuff were you thinking about all the time when you were sixteen?”

I thought about that, then said, “Maybe you’d better load that thing.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Caitlyn came onto the porch just then. Her blue dress shimmered in the sunlight, and Rachel had done her hair up into a bun. I understood then why Davey was so nervous. Caitlyn had always been a pretty girl, but right then she looked almost stunning.

“Hi, Billy,” she said.

“Hey, Caitlyn,” I managed.

“How do I look?”

I had to be delicate here. I couldn’t well gush and say too much, not with her father sitting beside me with a shotgun in his lap. But if I said too little, Davey might shoot me anyway.

“You’re easy on the eyes, Miss Caitlyn,” I said. Davey nodded out of the corner of my eyes, and I let out a happy sigh.

“Daddy,” she said, “what in the world are you doin’?”

“Gettin’ dark,” he said.

“I don’t know what that means,” Caitlyn told him, “but please put that thing down before Kevin gets here. For me, Daddy.”

Kevin pulled up in his parents’ car a few minutes later. He was nervous when he saw Davey and me on the porch. He was more nervous when he saw Caitlyn. By the time the two of them had posed for a dozen pictures for Rachel and left, Kevin had nearly sweat through his tux.

Davey and I watched as they pulled away.

“You know,” he said, “I used to come out here on this porch every evening and call that youngin’ in. ‘Gettin’ dark!’ I’d tell her. Now here she is, going out in that dark. And I can’t call her in. Not anymore. She’s gettin’ older. Becoming a woman.”

“Guess so,” I said.

“But I know this,” he said. “She’ll always be my little girl. And I’ll always be waitin’ here on the porch until she comes home.”

Filed Under: change, children, family, manners, parenting

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