conflict – Page 3

My sixteenth Thanksgiving

November 19, 2012 by Billy Coffey 7 Comments

My sixteenth Thanksgiving meal was the first one eaten without my family present. Also my last. Because I learned my lesson.

My girlfriend’s family was planning the mother of all Thanksgiving feasts. Everything was to be meticulously planned and prepared by the family matriarch, a hard-looking woman who chain smoked Marlboro 100s but did so with a whiff of proper daintiness that harkened back to her ancient Virginian roots.

Meals would be served in four courses and include fancy table settings, crystal glasses, and food I couldn’t pronounce. Relatives far and wide were more summoned than invited. A new dining room table was purchased just to accommodate the thirty or so people. “It’s going to be quite the soiree,” my girlfriend said. “Can you come?”

Yes.

For two reasons. One was that I was her boyfriend and so had boyfriend obligations. Second was that her family was what I referred to as Important People. Successful and powerful and rich. They drove BMWs and wore J. Crew and ruminated over the stock market. They were, in essence, both everything my own family was not and everything I wanted to become.

I had no reservations about going because I wasn’t likely to miss anything of real substance at home. They Coffey version of Thanksgiving celebration involved little more than a turkey, some stuffing, and my own relatives gathered around a simple pine table. People who drove trucks and wore Wal-Mart and talked about hunting. Not that there was anything wrong with that. There wasn’t. I just thought that maybe it was time I broadened my horizons and saw how the other half lived.

So I went. And my girlfriend was right, it was quite the swanky affair. Fancy people arriving in fancy cars to eat fancy food. You would think all of that would translate into a fancy time. But then again, some things get lost in translation.

For one, I soon learned that all the wealth and power my girlfriend’s family had accumulated resulted in some bad feelings. Some were jealous of others, others were angry at some, and it seemed all of them had something against somebody. The meal, tastefully prepared, was given without prayer. And the table that was bought specifically to bring so many people together didn’t. Squabbles broke out. Arrogance was displayed. Pettiness was front and center. And before long my girlfriend’s mother, the properly dainty matriarch, jumped up from her seat and ran like a mad woman for her smokes, screaming through her tears that she “should have never done this!”

I sat there, lost in wonder at the sight. Here were people who had worked hard and labored much to enjoy the fruits of success, only to find that they had lost one another and a bit of perspective in the process. Far from being one of the family, I had been relegated to mere spectator. Which was fine with me. Those people were nuts.

My girlfriend had become accustomed to the shouts and accusations. She leaned over just as her mother slammed the front door and said, “Life’s a beach, huh?”

She said that often. And it seemed to me as though her family had lived up to that philosophy. They had all staked their claim on the shoreline and built their castles, marveled and worshipped them even, and then forgot that it was all sand in the end.

The good life didn’t look so good to me. If that was having it all, then I’d rather keep my nothing. So I did the only thing I could. I left. Quietly and politely.

I went back home, back to the plain food served on the plain kitchen table to my plain relatives. Back to a place where the bonds of God and family held true not merely for one day a year, but all of them. And you know, that wasn’t just the best Thanksgiving meal I’d ever had, it was also the best Thanksgiving period.

Because that was when I learned I shouldn’t just be thankful for what I had, but for what I didn’t.

Better days

November 12, 2012 by Billy Coffey 4 Comments

Yesterday was no big deal. Sundays aren’t really supposed to be. It was a sleep in and go to church, come home and eat, take a nap during the football game kind of day. The best day.

And it was Veteran’s Day. Big deal around here. There are quite a few veterans in this small town and the mountains and hollers around it, and yesterday that stood up in our churches and accepted our thanks and ate half price at our restaurants. This is a good thing. I was too young to remember the end of the Vietnam War, but I know the stories of what many of our soldiers faced when they came home. It’s nice that whatever our politics may be, this country can unite around those who’ve fought and died just so we can have the right to disagree.

One more thing about yesterday:

My wife and I fully intend to take care of Christmas early this year. No last minute scrambling for gifts, no tardiness on Christmas cards. Get it done and done quick, then just sit back and enjoy. That’s our plan. So yesterday we told the kids it’s time for wish lists.

Reading over those (Legos and a 3DS for him, books and more books for her) made me think of something else that tied in a roundabout way to Veterans. It happened on the Western Front around Christmas in 1914, in the midst of World War I. And though no American forces were involved, I still want to share it. It goes to a larger story, I think. One about all of us.

In that week leading up to Christmas, fighting in the trenches between German and British soldiers slackened. Enough, in fact, that soldiers from both countries would even walk across no-man’s land bearing gifts. Season’s greetings were exchanged. And in those brief but welcomed moments between the gunfire, soldiers often heard the singing of carols. It all culminated on the Christmas Eve and Christmas Day almost a hundred years ago, when both sides decided on their own that war simply wasn’t right. They joined together for those two those days not as enemies, but as human beings. There were joint ceremonies to bury the dead. There was even a friendly soccer match.

The war went on after that, of course. There were attempts the following year for another Christmas truce, but it was not as widespread. The generals—ones who strategized and ordered but rarely fought and bled—prohibited it. Poison gas began to be used. The levels of fighting and dying greatly increased. Each side began to view the other as less than human.

I thought about that a lot on Sunday, sitting there in my comfortable living room with my family around me and the sun shining outside.

I am thankful for my country. I am thankful for those who’ve fought and died for me. And yet even as I give thanks I also mourn for the families left shattered, both by those who never returned from war, and those who went to war thinking they’d never return only to come home and not survive the peace they deserved.

I understand this is a mean world. I know there are people and nations who want nothing more than to see the end of this country, and I thank God daily that I can work and rest and play thanks to the men and women who wear our uniform and bear our flag.

I am not a pacifist. Yet I wish for peace, even as I know that peace will never come.

But I wonder what would happen if all the men in all the wars that rage upon this earth would one day decide war simply wasn’t right. I wonder what would happen if we saw everyone as human. People who struggle and hurt and dream and love just as we do.

Goo Goo Dolls, Better Days

Everything made fair

May 14, 2012 by Billy Coffey 4 Comments

life-text-unfair-Favim.com-184638_large — image courtesy of bing.com images

At eight, my son is at that age when the world begins to unfold in a way that is both bigger and bitter. It’s exciting—some days he feels like an explorer set loose in a strange and fantastical land. But it’s heartrending, too, because he’s beginning to realize that though strange and fantastical, the world is also mean.

His word—mean. I don’t think I’ve ever heard life described as such, but I think it’s apt. This world does look and feel mean sometimes. It isn’t easy. Many times, it’s not fun. And very often it doesn’t seem much fair at all.

This last point—the unfairness of it all—has been a common topic in our home of late. The Coffey household has had its share of aggravations, most of which are too insignificant to share but matter enough when they’re felt. It’s the little things that make our days bright or sullen, depending upon which way they turn. It all accumulated the other day with my boy, who was forced to miss a friend’s birthday party when he developed a sudden and ferocious cold. Sitting there on the sofa, coughing and snotting and feverish, he looked at me and said,

“Everything should be made fair, cause nothin is.”

Wise words made wiser because they’re true. It was kind of sad to be there when he said that, and not just because he felt so bad when he did. No, what got me was that he was only eight, and he’d just stumbled upon that one great truth. I was hoping that knowledge would continue to elude him, if only for a while longer. We grow up to discover a myriad of unpleasantness in this world, but few are as unwelcomed, as…unfair.

It isn’t fair that some live in want and others in excess. It isn’t fair that some are hungry and others are gluttons. It isn’t fair that a man can’t find a job, or a woman can’t bear a child, or that there are the lonely and the downtrodden, or that war is everywhere and peace is nowhere, or that babies die and the elderly waste away, or that dreams so often go unfulfilled. And it isn’t fair that all of those things happen so, so often, and there doesn’t seem to be any way around it.

If my son had his way, everything would be fair. People would get what they deserved. The world would be a better place.

You could chalk that up to childlike reverie if it weren’t for the fact that a lot of grownups think much the same thing. Fairness is a word we hear a lot of nowadays. It’s repeated by politicians and activists, protestors and pundits. They want to make new rules, they say. Change the order of things. Make it all new again.

They want to make everything fair, cause nothin is.

Me, I’m not sure where I stand on all of this. The notion seems good enough, I guess. I’m just not too sure of the consequences. The whole thing seems a bit too pie-in-the-sky, akin to working towards the goal of every day being Christmas.

Life is inherently hard. That’s what I wanted to tell my son as he sniffled beside me. It’s hard and tough and won’t get easier. And sometimes the more you wish the more disappointment comes, just as sometimes the harder you’ll try the more you’ll fail.

But I held my tongue and let him pour it all out, because sometimes you have to do that, too. You have to get angry and disgusted. You have to lash out. Often, that’s the only way change ever comes.

And who knows, maybe someday everything will be fair. Maybe his is the generation that will change the order of things and make everything new again.

Maybe. Who knows.

But I doubt it. Call me cynical. Because this world isn’t for the weak or the weary, but it’s still the only world we have.

Dear Casey Anthony

July 13, 2011 by Billy Coffey 12 Comments

Dear Casey Anthony,

I have to say I’m probably the only person in the world who didn’t know about you two weeks ago. That’s not to say I keep myself ill-informed of what’s going on in the world. I don’t. In fact, I think I probably know more than I should.

It’s just that when it comes to murdered children…well, that’s the sort of thing of which I do try to keep myself ill-informed. I have kids, you see. I worry about them and fear for them enough. I figure I really don’t need another reason to do more.

That’s why I ignored you as best I could. Sure, there were a few times when I’d come across a newspaper story or some television commentary. But I turned either the page or the channel. I didn’t want to see you, didn’t want to read about you. No offense intended. Sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

But then came the trial and then the verdict, and it was pretty much impossible for anyone to do anything without hearing about you. So I did start to pay attention. I wanted to know what it was about you that had struck such a nerve in so many people, and I wanted to know what that said about us.

I’m neither theologian nor philosopher, just a guy in a hat. I won’t use this space to excoriate you (plenty have done that, right or wrong) or laude our justice system (ditto). I’ll just say this:

I’m not sure why you got all that attention. Ours is a world in which many children such as your own go missing and are found dead. And like you, their accusers are brought in front of judges and juries to be found guilty or innocent. I’ll leave the answers as to why your case became the focus rather than another to those smarter than I. But I do think ours is a society that must be entertained. We may walk straight in our going about, but inside our hearts are hooked downward. We crave the terrible and the depraved, and we found both in you.

We also found in you the culmination of our baser, more selfish selves. What parents in their weakest moments have not fantasized of a life of freedom from their children? Who has not secretly considered any means necessary to exchange a bland existence for one of fame and fortune? I suspect the difference between you and most is that those frail moments remain in our hidden places and yours were cast out into the world.

Much of the anger directed at you is justified. Much of that outrage, I think, is also a kind of fear. In you we see what evil results when we are untethered from responsibility and left to ourselves. We are reminded of the ease by which we can rationalize even the worst acts. We see the depths to which human beings can plumb.

I understand you’ll be free soon, at least the sort of freedom that imprisonment denies. I’ve heard of death threats and relocation plans. I’ve also heard of agents being hired and books being planned. Movies being discussed. And a desire for more children.

I think in the end, that’s what bothers people most. We have an inherent desire for justice, for the guilty to be punished and the innocent redeemed. For many, you are but one piece of evidence among many to prove that desire is an empty one that cannot be filled in this world.

Fair or not, in the end we see that a blameless child has been killed and her mother will now receive the wealth and attention she so coveted. I suppose that’s where we’ll end this. So much has already been said by so many people, and I hate to add to the pile. But I will say this before I go—you are not the first person to be hated in this world, nor the first to perhaps put your own wants before the needs of others in a search for some sort of earthly heaven. But as you step out from behind bars and into the world, you would do well to remember the many who have found that heaven and discovered it to be a hell.

Regards,

Billy

What I was doing when the Rapture didn’t happen

May 23, 2011 by Billy Coffey 10 Comments

Saturday, May 22, 5:50 pm.

I could tell you the reason why I’m presently walking the widow Pence’s dog has nothing at all to do with Harold Camping’s promise that the Rapture is mere minutes away, but I’d be lying. The truth is that I’m doing this precisely because we’re all going to die.

You’ve heard of Harold Camping, yes? Me neither. Not until this week, when the Drudge Report got hold of his story. Seems Mr. Camping, who runs some sort of religious broadcasting network in California, fancies himself a bit of a math whiz. He’s crunched the numbers and decided that according to the Bible, Saturday is the beginning of the end. Better hang on folks, he says, because this ain’t gonna be pretty.

This is what I’m thinking about while walking widow Pence’s dog—Buttercup is her name, a white poodle who looks like the business end of the mop I use on the wood floors in the house. She’s a happy dog, unlike her grouchy owner.

The problem with Buttercup in general and the widow Pence in particular began a few Saturdays ago. Ms. Pence had moved into the house down the road and minded her own business. There was no neighborliness about her. Rumor on the street was that she chased away a few neighborhood kids whose kickball had strayed into her front yard. That seemed to be the sum total of her social interaction.

She’s a non-waver too, which does not help her case. Neighbors wave to one another. It’s common courtesy. Ms. Pence was not interested in waving, much less saying hello. She walked Buttercup nightly around the block, their heads both high and pompous and their eyes fixed straight ahead.

So, Saturday a few weeks ago.

Busy day, lots to do, the first of which was to pile a load of trash and brush onto the back of my redneck hoopty truck and haul it all to the dump. I pulled out of the driveway and turned left—why it was left and not right I do not know, I can only assume God decided to teach me something—past the widow Pence’s house.

I assumed the white mass in the middle of the road was a bit of discarded trash whipped there by the wind, but then it moved. Wagged, actually.

Buttercup.

She did not move, merely sat right there where she was and looked at me. I stopped ten feet in front of her, the hoopty’s engine growing, impatient, as if asking me what was going on and hurry up already because we had a lot to do that day.

I put the truck into neutral and gunned the engine, thinking that would be enough to scare her out of the middle of the road. No such luck. Tried the horn. Same result. She just sat there with her tongue out, which was likely because she was hot but I nonetheless took for mockery.

I couldn’t pull around her to either side; a boat and a car were blocking the way. So there I sat, my Saturday and my pride in peril because some little pansy dog wouldn’t get out of my way.

I stuck my head out the window. Said, “Hey dummy, get outta my way.”

Nothing.

So I tried louder, “I’m gonna squish you into a fluffy white pancake.”

At which point Buttercup sauntered toward her front yard. Not because of me, mind you. Because of the widow Pence. Who had been standing there watching and listening the whole time.

“You have some nerve, young man,” she said. “How dare you speak that way?”

What followed was not among my brighter moments. In deference to space and time, I’ll skip over that. Suffice it to say that by the time I pulled away, the widow Pence and I did not like each other. At all.

And that’s how it stood between us until this week, when I read about Mr. Harold Camping’s math skills. The truth is that I fully expect this world to chug on as it always has in the next ten minutes. If Jesus doesn’t know when the end is going to come, I doubt some guy with a pencil and a piece of paper does.

But still, the end will come. Sometime.

We don’t know when or where, but it’ll happen for each of us. We’d better be ready. Say the things we need to say, do the things we need to go. Love and make amends.

Which is why I walked over to the widow Pence’s house and apologized. Why I talked her into letting me take Buttercup for a walk. And why she is at this moment two steps in front of me on the leash, no doubt relishing in the snickers I’m getting from the other people on the street.

But that’s okay. Because if my end doesn’t come in the next few minutes, it will eventually. At least I’ll have one less thing on my mind when I go.

The luckiest boy in the world

March 30, 2011 by Billy Coffey 26 Comments

I’ve seen the boy a few times when I pick my kids up from school, just a little thing, no taller than my waist. Why he stood out to me among the throng of other elementary-aged children I can’t say, though I suspect his demeanor helped.

No hollering from this boy. No running down the halls, no smile. Not even (as far as I could tell) friends. Just him, walking by his lonesome into the cafeteria every afternoon where parents waited to pick their kids up and spare them from a bus ride home.

The school is home to what is generally known as the poor children in town. There is evidence for this fact—dirty faces, oversized clothes, undersized clothes, and a plethora of emotional problems due to meager home lives. They are good kids in bad situations, unaware they were born with a strike or two against them.

Like the boy. He of the bushy, unkempt hair and the backpack with holes so big everything from pencils to notebooks comes tumbling out. A worn and faded sticker is slapped over one hole. The name JEFF is stenciled there. I wonder if it’s there as a patch or so Jeff can better keep track of his belongings. Or, perhaps, to help remind him of who he is.

Jeff snakes his way through the lunch tables toward his waiting mother. Her smile is not reflected in his face. He looks tired. All the kids do, mine included, but Jeff especially so. He does not hug his mother, simply stands there looking at her feet. She rises from her chair and guides him to the door with her hand. They are gone.

A week later and there is Jeff again, plodding into the cafeteria. I notice his hair hasn’t been combed since the last time I saw him. His eyes keep to the small amount of space just in front of his feet. His backpack is empty. I wonder if that’s because he has no homework or because of the holes. His mother is absent this time, replaced by an older woman I take to be his grandmother. Jeff does not hug her, though she hugs him. Then she guides him to the door with her hand. They are gone.

It was the same three days later except it was neither mother nor grandmother, but a man. His father, I wonder. But then I see the man does not guide Jeff to the door with his hand, he simply gets up and lets Jeff follow. I decide no, perhaps not his father. Perhaps someone else.

That night, I ask my wife about Jeff. She teaches at the school, knows most everyone, but she can’t place him. I ask my kids. They, too, don’t know him.

I’m sitting in the cafeteria the next day, waiting along with thirty or so other parents for the final bell to ring. I notice Jeff’s mother sitting to my right, a few empty seats between us.

I lean over and say hello, which is returned with a smile that seems a bit forced. We spend the next few moments making small talk about the weather and my hat.

I say, “You’re Jeff’s mother, right?”

“Yes.” She looks as if she’s waiting for me to ask something else. I don’t. “He’s a middle child. Middle children have it harder sometimes, I think.”

“I’ve heard that,” I tell her. “So he has two other brothers or sisters?”

“No,” she says. “Well, yes. I suppose, in a way.”

I wonder how a mother could not know how many children she’s had.

“You see, his father and I are divorced. We had three children, including Jeff. His father remarried and has four step-children.”

“Oh. So there’s—”

“—Seven,” she says. “Yes. I talk to Jeff all the time about how great he has it. He stays with me unless I’m working nights. I do that some. He’ll stay with his grandma if I am. And then he goes to his father’s on the weekends. It’s nice. Jeff has three bedrooms. Can you imagine? I tell him he’s the luckiest boy in the world.”

The bell rings. Children everywhere, including mine. Including Jeff. He approaches with is holey backpack and his unkempt hair. I see the clear sunshine in the other children’s eyes and the dark rain in his.

He looks tired. All the kids do, mine included, but Jeff especially so. He does not hug his mother, simply stands there looking at her feet. She rises from her chair and guides the luckiest boy in the world to the door with her hand.

They are gone.

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