Billy Coffey

storyteller

At The Mall

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“Leave me alone, you freakin’ nut!”

A young lady at the mall. To me. Spoken in an angry and sneering voice that stops everyone else coming and going through the doors. People are spectacle-driven at their core. And this is quickly becoming a spectacle.

My crime, it seems, is that I looked back when I pushed open the swinging doors to the parking lot. Rounding the corner behind me came a blur of a woman. Boots, jeans, and a sweatshirt that announced her attendance at the University of Virginia. Huffing and puffing and mumbling to herself, she had the appearance of someone very late for something very important. Three giant Gap bags, a pink-striped Victoria’s Secret box, a cup of coffee, a soft pretzel, and a purse were all haphazardly arranged in her arms. She steamrolled toward me while trying to look at the expensive watch on her left arm.

So I exited, stepped to my right, and held the door open with my left hand.

She charged ahead, still trying to check the time and still not quite doing it. Then she glanced up long enough to get a bearing on the door. Which, thanks to me, was already open.

“Excuse me?” she said.

I smiled. She didn’t.

“I got the door,” I said. “Come on out.”

“Don’t you hold that door for me,” she said, eyes bulging. “I am perfectly capable of opening the door without the assistance of anyone else.”

First thought—huh? Second thought—I should have stayed at home.

“I’m sure you can, ma’am,” I said. “But I just thought—”

“I don’t care what you thought! What is this, Big Strong Guy rescues puny woman? Well I don’t need your help, Big Strong Guy. I just need you to get out of my way!”

“Ma’am, I didn’t mean any—”

That was when I was cut off by the “freakin’ nut” comment. Plus a few others I really don’t care to elaborate upon.

Which brings us to the present moment. This lady’s rant has escalated in decibels and language enough to become a very effective attention magnet. Most everyone using the doors pauses to watch the scene. Not that I can blame them. I would stop and watch, too.

“LET GO OF THAT DOOR LET IT GO NOW!!” she screams.

I stand my ground. Partly out of the deep ethical conviction that is at the root of every good Southern gentleman, but mostly because I have decided that no yuppie college liberal with a chip on her shoulder is going to tell me what to do.

“I ain’t gonna do it,” I say.

So she yells more. About not being a helpless child. About self-reliance and women’s liberation and archaic traditions. She screams and spits like Hitler behind a podium. And as is usually the case with people who shout at me, my eyes glaze and her voice fades into a muffled, incomprehensible voice. Not unlike the “Waa waa waa” used by Charlie Brown’s teacher.

“…and don’t you ever think otherwise, do you understand me?”

No. Not really. But I can’t tell her I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t want to get hollered at again. Besides, I’m getting a little tired from holding that door.

So I take a deep breath and say, as humbly as I can, “Ma’am, I am truly sorry for offending you. You’re right. You can handle this. Please forgive me.”

She starts her rebuttal, but I close the door in mid-sentence. The faces of the men in the crowd around me show a slight sense of disappointment, either because they want to see me wait her out or they want to see me get slapped. The faces of the women are mixed, as if they somehow know there can be no winner here.

Satisfied that she has just won a pivotal battle in the war of equality, the woman adjusts herself, turns around, and pushes the door open with her hip.

Halfway through, she trips.

Shopping bags and coffee and pretzel and purse scatter in all directions, and she hits the concrete with a loud thud.

Silence all around.

The woman sits on the cold concrete, momentarily confused in a heap of freshly stained Gap T shirts and a rather attractive nightgown.

The crowd is stunned at the irony.

And me? I’m barely managing to keep a straight face. Nice? No. Honest? Yes.

Then my Christian guilt kicks in. I should help her up, I think. Jesus would help her up. It’d be a turn-the-other-cheek kind of thing.

But as I take a step toward her, I am met by laser beams shooting from her eyes.

Then again, I’m not Jesus.

And from the looks of it, none of the other folks still milling around are Jesus, either.

The sudden realization of just how stupid she looks makes the woman jump up, grab her purchases, and scurry off into the parking lot. The crowd begins to disperse, some heading to their cars and others into the mall. One man opens the door for his wife, who laughs as she walks through.

My faith says that I have to love this woman. Whether I want to or not. And I don’t want to. Not at the moment, anyway. But still, the love Jesus says we should all have for everyone isn’t the sort that is a noun. It’s a verb. It means doing. Loving others is more than forgiving stumbles or remembering birthdays. It means caring. And also allowing yourself to be cared for.

Waiting for home

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A father seldom thinks things through before asking his children what they want for their birthday. He just says it. He thinks their answer will be an easy one. A new doll, maybe. Or the latest action figure. But what he does not consider is that their answer may be something utterly different and much more difficult than having to run to the store the next day and plop something down in front of a cashier.

I learned all this over the weekend. “What do you want for your birthday?” I asked my daughter. Her reply?

“A sleepover!”

So. My wife and I played host to three six-year-old girls last night. Having such young children sleeping at your house and away from theirs for the first time was something for which I admit I was not prepared. For the screaming and yelling, yes. And the mess, absolutely. I was even prepared for the dent that some tiny body part knocked into the living room wall.

But I was not prepared for Curly Sue. Not one bit.

Susan was her given name. But the dark brown locks of hair that adorned her head demanded a temporary nickname. Curly Sue had never spent more than a few hours away from her parents. The likelihood of her actually staying the entire night was slim. But she was determined. Curly Sue stepped through our front door with a pillow, a sleeping bag, and a knapsack full of toys. She was there to stay.

All went well that evening. Until bedtime, that is. Then things began the sort of downward spiral that can happen when you have a house full of little girls.

It began with goodnight prayers. Girls in a circle, taking turns praying for mommy and daddy and for God to make their stomachs quit hurting from all the popcorn. When it came time for Curly Sue’s contribution, though, there was only silence.

“Do you want to pray, Susan?” asked my wife.

A tiny nod.

“Okay, go ahead.”

More silence. Then, five words: “God, I wanna go home.”

Uh-oh.

Four phone calls to her mother later, and Curly Sue decided to be strong and stick it out. She didn’t want to leave her friends, but she didn’t want to stay, either. Could everyone go with her back to her house? she asked. It wasn’t that she wasn’t having fun. Curly Sue said she was having much fun. She loved our home and having her friends around, and she really loved all the popcorn. And there was so much to do! But as much as she was enjoying herself and her surroundings, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t where she should be.

“It’s just not home,” she told me.

The girls were asleep by eleven. By one, Curly Sue had appeared at our bedside twice. “I wanna go home,” she said. Both times.

Instinct woke me at six thirty when I rolled over and found no one beside me. I got out of bed and walked into the living room in search of my wife. I found her and Curly Sue in the rocking chair by the window, gazing out into the evaporating night.

“Just wait a bit,” my wife was telling her. “The sun’s coming, you just wait and see. And when the sun comes, it’ll be time to go home.”

Curly Sue smiled. Me, too.

Because I, too, am a little visitor in a big place, and I miss home. Oh, it’s wonderful here. Beautiful. I have fun, I’m around people I love, and there’s so much to do.

But it’s just not home. No, my home is somewhere else. Somewhere on the other side of this life. Somewhere perfect.

Like her, I’m torn. I want to go home, but I don’t want to leave anyone here, either. I want everyone to come with me so we can all have fun.

Some days, many days, I like it here. But there are days when the weariness of this world weighs on me. When I long for the day when laughter won’t be so fleeting and hope won’t be so hard to find.

Those are the days when I seem to sit by some unknown window and gaze out, trying to will the darkness to fade and the light to shine.

Because I know that when the Son comes, I can go home.

Snapshots

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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.

Packing For The New Year

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(This post first appeared in the Staunton News-Leader on January 11, 2009)

I’ve read that in the years of westward expansion, settlers would often spend the first night of their journey only a few miles from the city of their departure. That way all of their gear could be unpacked, used, and more fully considered. Any nonessentials could easily be disposed of, and anything missing could be gone back and purchased. A trial run, in other words.

It is in this spirit that I would like to start this new year. I am about to end my first full week of 2009, which seems to be about the right time to take a moment and consider what is thus far going right and what is going wrong. What I could use more of and what I could really do without.

My New Year’s resolution lasted exactly twelve hours and thirty-seven minutes. Not bad, really, until you consider that for eight of those hours I was sleeping. Still, I’ll call it par for the course. I’ve never had much luck with resolutions.

I nonetheless like the idea of deciding what it is you want to change about yourself. New Years is one of the few times that I take a long, hard look at me. Warts and all. It isn’t that pretty of a picture, but I guess that’s the point. There’s always something to fix. Always something we can either improve or discard.

This year, I think I need more of that self-investigation. But I’ll do it in the mindset that I am a work in progress rather than something eternally broken. I’m going to try to do without the high expectations. “Be ye kind,” the Bible says. To yourself, too.

Like most everyone else, I was glad to see 2008 go. Not that the whole year was bad, but enough of it was. A new year brings new possibilities. It’s the closest we get to a do-over, a chance to start from scratch. If Christmas is the season of hope, then New Years is the season of hopefulness. Things will be better, we promise ourselves. We won’t screw things up again.

But it’s worth remembering that life is more like a permanent marker than a piece of chalk. You can’t erase one year just because a new one comes along. You have to carry it with you, if only so you can learn from your mistakes. So I can do with the hopefulness this time of year brings. But I’ll do without the thinking that simply putting a new calendar on the wall will fix things.

If I’m packing for the trip into a new year, I can’t forget to carry along my faith. There seems to be a lot of that going around. Which is amazing, really, considering the fact that things seem so bad in so many places. But I wonder sometimes in what direction does that faith leads. For many, it’s toward a particular person or situation. When this person is in charge, we think, things will get better. Or when that government comes to its senses, things will start to turn the other way.

But faith in such things is ultimately self-defeating. It asks us to depend upon other people to make us happier. People who are just as frail and flawed as we. So I will be sure to carry my faith for the next twelve months, but I will also make sure that faith is placed in the God who created man rather than man himself.

And the last of my supplies? Love. There must be love, if for no other reason than no journey is worth beginning without it. It is the sort of love that reaches beyond self or family and extends to life itself. It is a love of the moment, of each breath, whether exhaled in frustration or peace.

That is the love I need. The love that makes hope and faith possible. The love that says no matter what the year may bring, it is God Who will bring it, and all will be well.

Handling The Remote

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Sexist I’m not, though I must admit I believe there are a few things men have a firmer handle on than women. Just a few, mind you.

Chief among these is the proper handling of the television remote control. This is most likely due to an almost childlike ignorance concerning its proper function on the part of the female. The remote is not used to simply turn the channel or adjust the volume. It’s purpose is much more intricate–to obtain an overall grasp of station selections, striking an elegant balance between quality viewing and commercial evasion. Or, in more simplistic terms, to channel surf.

My wife has long abandoned any hope of holding the remote control. Not that I do not trust her with it. But watching her use it is painful to me in the way that a composer would be pained by watching a hillbilly use a Stradivarius. It is a skill, the handling of a remote. Something that cannot be taught but must be inborn.

Over the past few weeks, however, an insurrection has begun over our family’s remote control. One led not by my wife. Not even by my son.

By my daughter.

It began innocently enough. I walked into the living room one evening and found her on the sofa and the remote on the ottoman. During a commercial break on her favorite cartoon, I decided to see what else was on. When I reached for the remote, however, I found a little hand already upon it. Hers.

The standoff that ensued was both temporary and bloodless, and my Alpha role in the family remained intact. But as these remote control battles increased in frequency, I began to lose a bit of face. The last one, yesterday, ended in a tickle fight that was only broken up with my son whopping me with a pillow.

I’ll be honest here. I really don’t understand the whole remote control thing. I don’t really know what it must be in my hands and no one else’s. I am not a callous snob. I will gladly watch what my family wants. But I must be the one to turn the channel.

True, there is a certain amount of power involved in the remote. Those buttons are alluring. I have a control over the television that is not offered in my life. Possibilities that are difficult at least and impossible at best.

Zoom, for instance. With a push of a button, my remote will enlarge a certain area of my screen and bring greater detail to the larger picture. The ramifications are enormous. I have outwitted both Jethro Gibbs on NCIS and Shawn Spencer on Psych by careful manipulation of that button. I don’t miss anything, even the smallest and most hidden clues. Which is quite unlike my own life, in which I miss too much.

And there is the Swap button. How wonderful that one is, enabling me to instantly trade what I’m watching for something else. Easy on my remote. Harder in my reality.

The Exit button is even more handy, enabling me to quickly escape from a screen I have no idea how I managed to get to. Exit works wonders for me in working with the television. Unfortunately, I rarely have one in life. Most of the time, I must find my own way out of the confusion I get myself into.

I would also like to have Pause, Rewind, and Fast Forward buttons in my life, just so I could take a break or try something again or skip over the parts I don’t like.

Play, too, would be a necessary function. I would like more play in my life.

That, I think, is why I’m so passionate about the remote. And if you’re honest, I don’t think you can blame me. Because we all want a little more control over our lives.
I will say, however, that there I have one function in my life that is much better than its counterpart on my remote control: the Guide button. A push of that button and I know how to navigate around on my television. Handy, no doubt.

But handier is the Guide in my life, the One who can navigate me through all of those parts in my life I would like to skip over or redo or exit. The One who can help me zoom in on what needs to be seen.

And Who can help me swap earth for heaven.

What’s In A Name

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Monday’s post about Allison brought a pretty interesting question from my spiritual sis, Jennifer Lee. She equated what I went through with Jacob and his wrestling match with God. Jacob, of course, came through that with a busted hip and a new name—Israel.

So, she asked me, “What’s your name?”

Looking back over that period in my life is something I rarely do nowadays. It seems too distant and too painful. But I think it’s worth it. If life is a journey, then it helps every once in a while to look back and see how far you’ve come. And it helps, too, to see that the God you were ignoring all that time, the God you talked to only before you ate your meals and visited only on Christmas and Easter, was still paying attention to you.

Jennifer’s question lodged itself in my mind and wouldn’t budge, demanding my attention. It’s something I never really thought about but certainly should have. If that really was God I met on that high rock in the mountains (and I do think it was), then I came down someone very different from the person who went up.

You cannot meet God and come away unchanged. Because God is all about changing you. Making you something more than you are. And better than you are.

God didn’t change my name, though. I believe He didn’t think it was necessary. He had already given me the name I needed.

Billy is a simple nickname for William. Not a lot of Billys out there anymore, especially my age. It’s a little old fashioned and dated. Which seems to fit me quite well, thank you.

But William is a middle name. Used for years to hide my first name, which is even more old fashioned and dated.

Homer.

My father’s name. I’ve never gotten around to asking him why he was stuck with that, mostly because it never really mattered. My father was and is the greatest man I’ve ever known. Mention his name to me, and I gather the mental images of someone teaching me not only to fish and hit a baseball, but how to be a man. Homer isn’t his name. Not to me. To me, those pictures are his name.

I, on the other hand, never looked too kindly on my first name.

I always dreaded the first day of school, when the teacher would go over the roll, unsure of what to call anyone.

“Homer Coffey?” the teachers would ask. Always.

My hand would shyly raise, and I would suggest, strongly, that Billy would perhaps be more appropriate. My request would always have competition, though, against the snickers of my classmates. The only thing that quieted them was a whispered threat to beat up anyone who was laughing after school. I was serious, too.

I went through a phase in high school where the name didn’t bother me as much. Homer, after all, was the greatest Greek storyteller who ever lived. It was an honorable name, worthy of distinction. Then Homer Simpson came along and pretty much ended that.

You could imagine the jokes. I’ve been referred to by some as “Homer Billy Simpson” for years.

After Jennifer’s question, though, I decided to do a little digging. I wanted to know what my name meant. Not Billy. Not William. Homer.

From the Greek, I found. The word has a double meaning. “Hostage” is one. The other, “promise.”

Yes.

Because that is what I am. A hostage to a promise. A promise from God that no matter what I may do in this life, no matter what wrong turns I make or how badly I stumble, He will be there. A promise that says He will walk with me in the light and carry me in the darkness. And that there is nothing, nothing, that could convince Him to think otherwise.

I am a hostage. Oh, yes. Because there are times when I am too weary to believe, too scared to try, and too beaten to get up again. But just when I am about to stick my head in the mud and sink, I remember that night not so very long ago when a holy hand was extended to me.

“I won’t pick you up,” God told me. “I love you too much for that. But I’ll help you up. Every time. I’ll make sure that you’re life isn’t the one you think you want, but the one you know you want. I’ll make you love this world and not hate it. And I’ll make sure that when the end really does come, people will know you were here.”

The choice, as always, was mine. On that night long ago, I took that hand for the first time.

And I’ve yet to let go.

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