The wandering wise man
December 5, 2011 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
What you see to the right is the last remnants of the Coffey family’s most cherished Christmas tradition—the Wandering Wise Man. Dropped earlier this afternoon by two very excited hands and onto the ceramic tile of the bathroom floor. May he rest in pieces.
In order for me to fully explain the enormity of this event, I need to tell you about before. About three Christmases ago, when we were unpacking lights and ornaments and garland. And, most importantly, our manger scene.
My daughter was the self-appointed Nativity Setter-Upper, and it was a task she approached with the utmost holiness and care. Animals were positioned first, then shepherds and angels, Mary and Joseph, and then Baby Jesus. The wise men came last. Three of them usually.
But that year, there were only two.
We rooted through boxes and overturned ottomans and scoured the dark places beneath the television stand. Nothing. Which meant Daddy had to climb back into the attic with a flashlight and a prayer. Both worked. I found him upside down and backwards in a corner guarded by a hairy-looking spider. Problem solved.
But then a thought occurred to me. One about how we all seek Christ but sometimes get turned around and lost, and how it’s important to keep looking anyway. I put the wise man in my pocket, walked downstairs, and said nothing.
A while later my son happened to walk down the hallway and see the wise man in the middle of the floor along with a note—Have you seen Baby Jesus? By the time he ran back into the living room to summon the rest of the family, it had moved again. This time to my daughter’s bedroom.
“Guess he fell out of the box when we put the Nativity back in the attic last year,” I said. “Now he’s gotta find Jesus before Christmas.”
Thus the Wandering Wise Man was born.
He has miraculously emerged every year since in the weeks before Christmas, moving daily—often more than once—from room to room in search of the Savior. It is as far as I can tell the best idea I’ve ever had. The kids are so engrossed in his progress that come Christmas morning they head to the Nativity first and the tree second, just to make sure he’s reached his destination.
Earlier tonight the wise man appeared by the sink in the bathroom, where he was found by my daughter. In her excitement to spread the news, she knocked the figure to the floor. He shattered into a hundred pieces.
She did, too.
I found her on the bathroom floor cupping as many shards as she could find into her hand.
“I broke the wise man,” she sobbed. “I ruined everything!”
Uh-oh.
I gathered her off the floor and passed her to my wife, who took her to the living room for some rocking chair therapy. I snuck away long enough to swipe another wise man from the Nativity, scribble a new note, and place both at her bedside.
She found them a while later. Christmas was saved.
I checked in on her a bit ago before heading off to bed. Beside the wise man was a note written in seven-year-old scribble:
Dear 2nd wiseman thank you for showing up. I’m so sorry for hurting your friend.
I smiled. Both at the words and the little girl who wrote them. Then I took a pen from my pocket, turned the note over, and wrote a reply:
Please don’t be upset. Everyone makes mistakes. We’ll always love you, the wise men.
I’m pretty sure that note won’t mend her broken heart, but it might be enough to get the needle and thread going. Sometimes that’s all you can hope for.
Because the lessons that count the most also tend to hurt the most. Lessons like the one my daughter learned today. No matter how careful we are, we still break stuff. And not just wise men. Hearts, promises, trust, and dreams, too.
No matter how hard we try, we still make a mess sometimes. We still shatter the sacred and the special, leaving nothing but the shards of what was once whole that we’re forced to pick up through our tears.
Thankfully, the One whom the wise men seek doesn’t believe in everything being ruined. He’s in the business of putting together and making new.
And like my daughter’s wise men, He’ll always love us.
The last thing I’d ever write
November 2, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 86 Comments
The note above was penned by an eighty-five-year-old man named Robert. One day last month, he drove his car down a steep rural road to look at a pond. When he tried to drive back the way he came, the car rolled off the path and became mired in a ravine.
Robert was unable to walk out of his situation due to back problems that left him only able to get around with the help of a walker. He had no food. The only water he had barely filled an 8 ounce bottle. He honked his horn until the car battery was depleted.
Robert sat there, alone in his car, for two days.
With no food, little water, and temperatures in the upper 90s, he realized things didn’t look good. So he grabbed a pen and began writing on the car’s armrest.
Look closely and you can make a bit of it out. The first—and Robert said the most important—was that he make sure everyone knew it was an accident. Robert didn’t want anyone thinking he committed suicide. He wrote that the car’s wheels spun out. He asked that his family give him a closed casket.
About forty hours later, Robert was found. Turns out that final note wasn’t needed after all. As you can imagine, the whole ordeal changed him. Robert has a new outlook on life. He understands its delicateness. He knows every moment is precious.
It’s a good story with a happy ending. But me, I can’t stop thinking about that note.
What would I tell my family? What would I tell you? What would I say if I could never say anything more? Those questions have preyed on my mind since reading Robert’s story. I figured the only way I could start thinking about something else is to go ahead and write my letter.
So here it is, the last thing I’d ever write:
Dear All,
I don’t know how I managed to get myself in this mess. I think a lot of times you can’t see the trouble that’s coming until it’s on you. This is probably one of those times. I guess I should hurry. I never used to think much about time. Suddenly, time seems pretty important.
To my family, I want to say that the very last thing I want to do is leave you behind. You need to know that as much as I’m ready for heaven, I’m thinking the angels will have to drag me there. But don’t worry, I’ll find me a bench somewhere near the gate and wait for each of you.
To my wife, I’m sorry I was never the man I wanted to be. I’m thankful you overlooked that. Take care of the kids. Raise them to believe like you and fight like me.
To my son, there are few things more difficult in life than knowing how to be a man. I’ll give you a quick summary—work hard, laugh much, pray often. Love dignity rather than money. Face your darkness. Let your word be your bond. You’ll do well in life if you cling to those things. Know that I will always be proud of you.
To my daughter, you’ve taught me more about faith than anyone I’ve ever known. Remember this: we seldom have any choice as to the wars we must fight, we can only elect to face them with honor or cowardice.
To my friends, I know it may appear at times that I prefer silence to speech and solitude to company, but you mended the gashes I had rent into my own heart. Whatever goodness is in me was fostered by you.
I ask that you dispose of my remains as you see fit. I have no preference. Whatever flesh and bone is left behind is not me, it is merely an empty house that God has deemed I’ve outgrown.
Do not mourn, laugh.
Do not look back, look forward.
Live intently.
And last, know that all that separates the two of us is but one stroke of heaven’s eternal clock. Life is but a dream. Death is simply when we wake.
Dinging the universe
October 10, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 15 Comments
Steve Jobs image courtesy of photobucket.com
I’ll admit I’m a little late on the death of Steve Jobs. Truth be told, I didn’t know he’d died until two days after the fact. It was all over the news and the internet, people tell me. And you couldn’t pick up a newspaper without seeing his face on the front page. I guess that’s why I hadn’t heard. I don’t really keep up with the news. I’ve found it helps me enjoy the world more.
More truth: I hate computers. Maybe that’s the half-Amish side of me talking. Maybe I’m secretly afraid technology will steal my soul. Or maybe it’s the simple fact that I’ve never been able to work them well. Whichever the case, I count myself among the few who trust pen and paper more than keyboard and screen.
I heard last week that his biography, titled simply Steve Jobs, will be released sooner than expected. Evidently he granted his biographer unparalleled access to his life and sat for hours of interviews. Quite a coup, given that Mr. Jobs was a pretty private man. The book is already number one on Amazon. Sony purchased the movie rights for a million dollars.
Imagine, someone paying a million dollars for the rights to make a movie about your life. Your accomplishments. Imagine being called this century’s Thomas Edison. Or being compared to Leonardo da Vinci.
Imagine.
And yes, that’s the sort of person I’d like to be. Shouldn’t we all? I’m around college kids five days a week, almost ten hours a day. You know what? Most of them don’t want to become great. Most of them have somehow become convinced that they’re already great. They don’t want to affect the world, they want the world to affect them. I think that’s kind of sad.
I think there should be more people who say “I want to put a ding in the universe,” as Steve Jobs once said.
That’s what he did. He dinged the universe. But I wonder at what cost. His biography was written with his permission, he sat down and did all those candid interviews, not for the reason you might think. Not to inspire or inform the world Steve Jobs helped to transform, but simply because of this:
“I want my kids to know who I am.”
Of all the things I’ve read about Steve Jobs over the last week or so, that’s the one that stands out. Not the iPod or the iPad or the iPhone, but the iWant.
It takes a lot of effort to put a ding into the universe. A lot of time and failure and trying again. A lot of passion. It demands that priorities be set clear. Things like work take precedent. Things like family do not. And while I’m thankful for the Steve Jobs of the world and their dedication, the sacrifice the make is one too steep for me.
Steve Jobs’ death struck me. By all accounts he was a brilliant man who changed our world. There are a good many people in this world who long for those two things—to be both brilliant and remembered. I don’t mind saying I count myself among them. But honestly, the odds are good I’ll be neither. Maybe you, too. More probable than not, I will pass through this life just as the billions before me. My footprints upon this earth will be small and vanish. My picture will never grace the front page. The world will not notice my passing.
I will not ding the universe.
But when my time comes to trade this world for the next, I will pass with a smile. I’ll be ready, because I may not have much, but my kids will know who I am.
Showing us what we can’t see
September 26, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 15 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I had no idea how far we’d walked—when you’re tromping through the woods with two kids, time drags on until it becomes irrelevant—but it was far enough that we were ready to turn around and go home. After all, it wasn’t as if we had a map to go by. All we had were stories.
“Maybe we should just pray,” my son said. My son, who announced last week that he wanted to be a preacher when he grew up. To him, praying is the answer to everything.
“I think God would rather we walk than pray,” I told him.
“Why, did you ask him?”
I didn’t answer. We pushed on through the brambles and found the river—at least that part of the story had been proven right—then decided to sit and watch the water. My daughter tried to spot fish, my wife tried to spot spiders, and I tried to figure out where we should look next.
My son, the future Preacher Man, looked into the blue sky peeking through green trees and said, “Our Father, whose art ain’t in heaven, Halloween be your name.”
“This way,” I told them. “I think it’s over here.”
Which wasn’t true at all. I had no idea where it was or even if it was, but you know about men and directions. Besides, it wasn’t like we could pull over at the next gas station.
My daughter said, “Maybe we should just go home before we get eaten,” which brought more prayers from the little boy in the back.
I reminded them of the value of a story, of how the whole world was made of them and sometimes they’re true and sometimes they’re not, and how sometimes the ones that are not have more truth. And when you come across a story about an old home forgotten somewhere in the mountains, you have to go look. You just have to.
So we trudged on—me, my wife, my daughter, and the Preacher, who was now calling down the Spirit to keep Bigfoot away.
Truth be known, I didn’t think we’d find a thing. Though the mountains here are littered with the remnants of pioneer homesteads, their locations are masked by either wilderness or the foggy memories of the old folk. But the directions I’d received turned out to be pretty darn close. It wasn’t long until the woods opened up a bit into an ancient bit of clearing, and wouldn’t you know it, there was something up ahead.
Of course that something was hidden by a couple hundred years of changing seasons. Trees and bushes and plants had reclaimed the area that was once taken from them. All that remained to be seen was a bit of foundation. The rest was enclosed by an impenetrable wall of overgrowth.
“Let’s try to break through,” my daughter said, to which she received a chorus of no ways.
“I don’t want to go in there,” my wife said.
“I’m too tired to try to go in there,” I said.
“We should really pray first before we go in there,” my son said.
Simply going back was no longer an option. We’d found it now, and to leave without at least a look around simply wouldn’t do. So we looked. All of us. We poked and prodded for weak spots, we tried to peek into what had likely gone unseen for centuries. We stood on tiptoes and jumped and, once, even tried to make a human pyramid. But it was no use. The mountains would not give up their secrets that day.
“Hey,” my son said, “I see something.”
He was knee-bent, face almost in the dirt, peering through the undersides of thorns and thickets.
“Hey, wow.”
The rest of us followed. Knees bent, faces in the dirt, peering through the thorns, we found holes just big enough to peer through. What lay on the other side was nothing more than the remnants of a stone foundation, but to us it was Machu Picchu and Stonehenge and Easter Island rolled into one.
It was then that I realized what my son had done. The little Preacher Man, too little to jump too high or tiptoe too up, had decided to use his smallness to his advantage.
He’d gone to his knees.
“You can see more if you get on your knees, Daddy,” he’d often said. “If you stand up, you just see what you can. But if you bow down, God will show you what you can’t.”
Those words, profound as they were, had always gotten him a rub on the head or a squeeze on the shoulder. Nothing more. But then I knew just how right he was, and I wondered just how much I’d missed in my life because I’d been standing instead of kneeling.
Making a memory
August 3, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 21 Comments
image courtesy of katdish
We are by the creek, my son and I, our backs against the grass and our feet in the water, looking first to make sure the snakes are gone and then to the two white wrappers between us.
“You’re first tonight,” I tell him.
“Orange,” he says, “because it’s like the sun.”
I hand him the wrapper on the left and look out toward the mountains. Sure enough, the sun looks orange. That means red for me. Good. I like red.
He opens the package and licks the popsicle inside. There is a satisfying smack on the end, followed by, “Aaah.”
We sit for a while and watch in silence, watch the robin searching for supper in the front yard and the bumblebee doing the same in the flower bed and my wife and daughter watering the hanging baskets. I don’t know what my son is thinking, but I’m thinking that sometimes you can be closer to someone when you’re not talking and just enjoying their company.
These post-supper trips to the creek with popsicles were his idea. The inaugural event was held on the first day of summer vacation. Seems like that was just yesterday, but it was almost two months ago. Time ticks faster when we’re having fun. That’s what my son told me the other day. Then he said he sat for five minutes and watched the clock and discovered it ticks just the same whether you’re looking or not.
There’s another lick and smack, but this one is followed by a sigh. I ask him what’s wrong.
“Summer’s almost over,” he says.
I ask him how he knows that, and he answers that he saw the newspaper last Sunday. There was a back-t-school ad mixed in with the comics section. He says seeing that made him feel like he did the time he ate chili and then ice cream after.
“I want it to stay summer forever,” he says, “like on Phineas and Ferb.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I’d like it to stay summer forever too, and offering up some cockamamie wisdom about how all good things must come to an end would only depress the two of us more. Instead, I start singing the Phineas and Ferb theme song. Partly because I have to say SOMETHING, but mostly because it’s nearly impossible to sing and be depressed at the same time.
He joins in halfway through. When we finish, the lick/smack/sigh is replaced by lick/smack/smile. Much better.
“Dad, can I ask you something?”
“Sure,” I tell him.
“Are we making a memory?”
I bite down on my red popsicle and think. “I reckon so,” I tell him.
The smile is bigger now. It’s the sort of smile you get after you’ve been carrying a very heavy something for a long while and can finally lay it down.
He is silent again, but not because he didn’t hear me. He’s too busy to talk. He’s more concerned with doing the one thing children always excel at and adults usually fail miserably—being in the moment. His eyes are bugged and his breathing is deep, steadying himself against the picture his mind is taking.
The cool water flowing over his hot toes, the orange sun peering from the peaks of blue mountains, sounds of robinsong in the trees and frogs in the woods, the sight of his mother and sister and the gentle mist of hose water over purple and white flowers, orange popsicle leaking down his fingers, the bright sky and the warm breeze, the first star of the night and the knowing that for this one instant, the whole world is peaceful and good and right.
He is living this moment, and when he is done he will tuck it into a secret place in his heart and keep it safe. He will tend this moment and nurture it and keep it whole. Alive.
And on some cold and distant January day that promises little more than spelling tests and word problems, my son will sit in his small desk at school and pull that memory out. He will look out the window and see bright skies rather than somber heavens and green leaves rather than bare trees. He will hear robinsong and taste orange popsicle and feel cool water running over hot toes.
It will be winter then and he will be at school. He will know then that the world is not peaceful and good and right, but he will gain strength knowing it once was and thus may well be again.
All because of the memory he made with me on this summer night, here by the creek.
In the name of Jayzus!
July 25, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 14 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
I was winning.
Nothing too strange about that. The backyard baseball games with my son are usually close on purpose, which is much more important than who wins or loses. Sometimes I let him win in an effort to teach him how to be a gracious victor. And sometimes I makes sure he loses, because being a gracious failure is equally important. He’s going to face both triumph and setback in life. Best to teach him about both now, when he’s young.
This time, though, I was going to leave the end result to him. He would win or lose on his own, and it all came down to one pitch.
So.
Tie game, two outs, last inning. A homerun (in our backyard, homeruns are anything that passes the maple tree in the air) wins. Anything else, and he’d have to wait until the next evening to try again. Mother and sister were on the porch, watching and cheering. He took his stance, glared, and tapped on the rock we used for home plate.
I had already started my windup when he called time. Rather than take another practice swing or spit, he raised his hands in the air, looked to the heavens, and said, “In the name of Jayzus, lemme hit a homer!”
Laughter from the porch. I wrinkled my brow. Said, “What are you doing?”
“Heard it on the radio,” he told me. “Preacher said God gives me anythin’ if I ask in the name of Jayzus.”
Oh. Jayzus = Jesus. Okay then.
He stepped back in, tapped the bat on the rock. Glared. I threw. He hit.
Over the maple tree. Homerun.
That’s how it started.
Since then, the name of Jayzus has been bandied about quite often in our house. I heard it the next evening when my son lost the Lego spaceship he’d built—“In the name of Jayzus, come back to me!” Heard it again a few hours later—“In the name of Jayzus, save me from the bathtub!”
And then this morning—“In the name of Jayzus, let me at a Pop-Tart and not eggs!”
Comical, yes. And I suppose it’s even more comical that in all those instances, things worked out just the way he wanted. He did find his Lego spaceship. And since he’d stayed indoors all day because it was about a million degrees outside, we allowed him to forgo his bath. And we were out of eggs this morning, out of everything really. Except for Pop-Tarts.
My son thinks he has quite a thing going on here. He believes he’s just stumbled on the secret to life, that he’s won some sort of supernatural lottery. You should see him strutting around.
Me, I say nothing. Sometimes it’s best to let these things play out on their own. Sticking my Daddy Nose into it, telling him he’s really kind of wrong about the whole thing, won’t work. The big things in life tend to be the ones you have to learn on your own.
Besides, I really don’t think I’m qualified to add any wisdom. Not with this. Because I pretty much do the same thing.
I use God as a rabbit’s foot. I tend to keep him around in my pocket and pull Him out whenever there’s trouble. Not so much when I lose a Lego spaceship, but definitely when I want something bad to go away. Or when I want something good to get a little closer.
Or just when I want.
Truth is, I’m no better than my son.
Maybe what’s best is that I talk to him about this after all. Just be honest and say that yes, he’s doing something wrong, but so am I. And maybe we can figure out this thing together.
Because God wants us all to love Him for who He is, not for what He can give.
It’s all music
July 5, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 13 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
For the most part, I seem to be the only one immune to the music bug. Not so for the rest of my family. My wife caught it first, passed to her via a visit with the music leader at church. They were starting an instrument ensemble. My wife played the trombone in high school. Would be she interested in playing it again?
My daughter came down with it the following day. It was a variant—ivory keys rather than a brass horn—but just as bad a case. For the past week, she’s been practicing finger placement and note recognition at the piano in the dining room under the watchful eye of her mother.
Not to be outdone, my son has borrowed an acoustic guitar from the aforementioned music leader. He’s since become attached to it, would even sleep with it if I let him. We’re looking for a guitar instructor.
Fast.
Because, you see, whether just starting out or starting out again after years of neglect, making beautiful music requires three things—time, practice, and instruction.
All three are currently missing in the musical lives of my family.
It isn’t easy for me. My nerves are already frayed to the point of snapping. I’ve just finished driving my children home from their grandparents’ house, five miles of my son’s guitar and my daughter’s singing, both trying to match the perfectly-pitched tones of the Zac Brown Band’s “Knee Deep” that was wafting through the speakers. I’d spent much of that ride with my head out the driver’s side window, trying to escape the pain.
Yes, it’s that bad.
All you would need for proof of that is to be sitting here with me right now. Each of them are scattered throughout the house, trying to find music where music is yet to be. If I were honest—and I always try to be—I could say my wife’s attempt at the trombone sounds a little like two wounded hippos attempting to mate. And my daughter’s struggle at the piano sounds much like the tortured screams of someone walking over broken glass. And my son’s endeavor with the guitar is nothing less than the musical equivalent of waterboarding.
But still I endure, as do they. Because something is going on here that until two minutes ago I couldn’t quite put my finger on. Because that was the moment my daughter yelled, “Did you hear me play, Daddy?”
“I did,” I said, and let the second part of my answer—Pretty sure the whole neighborhood heard you, too—go unsaid.
“Am I getting better?”
“I believe you are.”
“Good, because I can’t tell. Sometimes the wrong notes sound as good as the right ones. Isn’t that silly?”
Ah.
“Not really,” I told her.
I suppose one would think the point of my family’s newfound musical training is straightforward—one learns to play an instrument in order to make good music. That’s where the time, practice, and instruction come into play. And yet my daughter has just shown me there is another something beyond that, a deeper and more necessary requirement.
I think learning to play music isn’t all that different from learning to live life. We try to do the best we can to make something beautiful, knowing all the while there will be a lot of the unbeautiful in the meantime.
There will be sour notes and awkward movements. Blatant frustration and unreasonable expectations. Failures abounding. And yet now I wonder if the beautiful lives we are all trying to build must be devoid of those things—if they must be perfect in order to be good.
I doubt it.
I think my daughter is right. Sometimes the wrong notes sound as good as the right ones. Sometimes a little girl struggling to play “Chopsticks” on the piano and a little boy trying to find a note—any note—on a guitar is better than even angel song.
When it comes to song and life, the point isn’t so much to play it well as it is to play it, to try and sing and dance despite the sour notes, and to believe and love and hope despite the pain that can result.
Because when it comes to God, it’s all music. Every single note.
A father’s presence
June 29, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 23 Comments
Though Father’s Day is passed, I couldn’t help but write about what was going on in Huron County, Michigan, while I was in the backyard playing baseball with the kids.
That was around the time a frantic driver called 911 and said, “Uh, yes, I’m on Kinde Road outside of Caseville, and believe it or not, I just passed about a 5-, 6-year-old kid flying down the road with a red Pontiac Sunbird.”
Turned out, the kid was a boy. And he wasn’t five or six, he was seven. He was flying down the road, though—70 when the police found him racing down a rural road, standing up on the floorboard so he could work the gas and see over the steering wheel. Two Huron County deputies boxed in the Sunbird and managed to stop it on the side of the road.
They found the boy barefoot and dressed in pajamas. Crying.
You can imagine the shock those deputies must have felt. You can imagine that shock was doubled when the boy told them what he was trying to do.
“He was crying and just kept saying he wanted to go to his dad’s,” Caseville Police Chief Jamie Learman told the Detroit Free Press. “That was pretty much it. He just wanted to go to his dad’s.”
That’s all.
His father’s home was twelve miles away. The boy was staying with his mother and stepfather in Sheridan Township. He took the car while his stepfather was gone and his mother was asleep.
Woke up that Father’s Day morning, and just wanted to see his dad.
I’ll be honest—that broke my heart.
Yes, he could have killed himself. Or someone else. And no doubt he caused a considerable amount of grief to his mother, who was contacted shortly afterward by the police department and had no idea her son was gone. But to me, those things matter little. They’re relegated to the periphery of this story—there, but not enough to matter.
What matters, what I cannot get out of my head, was that this boy simply wanted his father and his father was not there.
Why, I don’t know. There are a great many reasons why mother and father divorce. Some are valid, many are not. Regardless, I doubt this young boy cared what those reasons were. And rather than suffer the silence most children of divorced parents must endure, he took it upon himself to do something, regardless of how dangerous that something may have been.
He wanted to see his dad, and he was going to do whatever was needed to do it.
I can’t get that out of my thoughts.
This post isn’t meant as a denouncement of divorce or proof that regardless of what experts say, children are not always the emotionally pliable and resilient people they are made out to be.
No, this post is about the importance of being a father. Of being there for your children and being a part of their lives. Of allowing yourself to be present regardless of the situation.
I think men tend to define their lives by the work they do. If one man is introduced to another, the first question after pleasantries are exchanged is invariably, “So what do you do for a living?” Always that, at least in my experience.
I suppose this is mostly due to the fact that ours is a gender given to action rather than reflection. We men enjoy doing, getting things done. And I’ll say that’s me at times, though I’m trying to be better. I’m trying to understand that my life won’t be judged by the job I have but the life I live.
It’s the difference I make, not the money.
That’s what counts.
I figure I’ll be doing well if I inspire in my children the sort of love and devotion that would push them to go to any lengths to see me, if only for a few small minutes.
I figure I won’t be doing well at all if they have to steal a car in order to do it.
There are statistics galore that prove beyond all doubt the importance of a mother in a child’s life, but let me tell you this: fathers are just as needed. Good fathers, present fathers, loving fathers.
Just ask a barefoot and pajama-clad young boy alongside a country road in Michigan.
Because but for the grace of God, that could be your son.
Or mine.
Treasures found
June 27, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 22 Comments
A last vacation post…
One would think that in an environment filled with literally thousands of these:
a young boy’s attention would be sufficiently diverted from the fantasies that define him to the reality that surrounds him. Not so for my son. If a vacation allows for anything, it is that opportunity to become someone else for a small amount of time. For me, that someone else was a beach bum. For him, it was a treasure hunter.
And he was after treasure. Not the normal sort of treasure, either. Gold bullion and precious jewels weren’t enough, oh no. What he wanted—what he was determined to find—were the remains of Blackbeard’s ship.
He knew we were generally in the right place—in 1996, archaeologist’s discovered the remains of the Queen Anne’s Revenge just a few miles down the road—and he arrived with the proper equipment. The two plastic buckets would be enough to haul his findings, he said. The two corresponding plastic shovels would be enough to dig them. And the metal detector he borrowed from his grandfather would be enough to find them.
The plan was foolproof.
The remains of Blackbeard’s ship were nowhere to be found. Plastic buckets and shovels would be of limited use, but still more than a metal detector finding a wooden boat. Those were the facts, facts I kept concealed from him. Because as any child knows about finding treasure, facts have little value. He was determined, my son, and I was determined to help him.
We set out early each morning (“We gotta get out there before anyone else finds it,” he told me). Just the two of us along the lonely beach, he with the green pail and I with the pink, because, as he said, “Boys don’t carry pink stuff, but daddies can.” We roamed among the shells and the surf, watched the dolphins and the turtles, and watched for treasure.
It was slow going, as was intended. My son inherited both my looks and my impatience—two things that will no doubt curse him for life—but we learned tolerance together that week. We understood the value of taking our time and looking.
Each day we would return for breakfast with our pails full, though of shells rather than wood. Neither of us were disappointed in our failure; by then we’d learned that venturing out together, talking and laughing and dodging the waves, could be described as many things but never failure. And we told stories as men of the sea are inclined to tell, accounts of big fish that were really small and entire planks of Blackbeard’s wood that were snatched by the tides before we could snatch them. And each night at bedtime we would recount our day together and end it with the promise that the next day his treasure would be found.
For five mornings, we looked. Pails at our side, eyes cast downward, only to return with pails of conch shells and scallops.
His steadfast countenance was failing. We were leaving the sixth day, which meant only one more walk, and by then he’d figured out the metal detector would be useless. I told him not to worry, that treasure is one of those things that are usually found when one isn’t looking at all, but he didn’t believe me.
We searched long that last morning. Walked longer, too. To the very tip of the island, where the ocean met the sound in a mash of tides and waves. We’d agreed not to pick up any shells that day and focus our attention better. By the time we neared our temporary home, our pails were empty.
I was preparing the sort of disappointment-will-happen speech that fathers hate to give when he shot out to my left and picked up something from the sand. He yelled (“Here it is! I found it!”) and ran back to my side. Then he showed me this:
A piece of driftwood. Utterly plain and worthless. Those are the facts, facts I kept concealed from him. Because as any child knows about finding treasure, facts have little value. He was determined, my son, and I was determined to help him.
That piece of driftwood now proudly sits on my son’s dresser. He looks at it every day. It’s his treasure, he says. Found on the beach with his father.
Me, I say it’s treasure, too. Utterly unique and priceless. I hope he guards it well.
And I will guard the treasure I found that day as well. It too is unique. Priceless. Not a piece of wood, not a pretty shell. Just this:
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
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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