Billy Coffey

storyteller

  • Home
  • About
  • Latest News
  • Books
  • Blog
  • Contact

A father’s presence

June 29, 2011 by Billy Coffey 23 Comments

e26901427bc958f603f1bb0345763b5f
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.

Filed Under: children, distance, family, Fathers Day, parenting

In praise of fathers

June 19, 2009 by Billy Coffey 41 Comments

I’ve been a father for seven years now and a father of two for five, but I’ll be honest—I still have no idea what I’m doing. There is no how-to guide for fatherhood, no instruction manual that the doctor hands you just after he hands you a new child.

Yes, the Bible covers just about all we need in the way of raising children. Just about, though. But just as a lot of things were left out of the Bible that in my opinion really shouldn’t have been (what made Jesus laugh? For some reason, I really want to know that), there are a lot of things missing on how to be a dad.

Like what to do when your three-year-old daughter accidently locks herself in the bathroom and can’t figure out how to unlock the door (what I did: pull a Jack Bauer and kick the door in. Result: louder crying). Or what to do when your four-year-old son manages to shove his peanut butter and banana sandwich into the DVD player just because that’s not where it goes (what I did: “What were you thinking?” Result: “I dunno.”).

I wish the Bible was clearer on those sorts of things. I need the guidance. When it comes to fatherhood, I resemble more a turtle on its back than Ward Cleaver. Every father is like this.

For some reason the women tend to outnumber the men around here, at least as far as the comments go. I’m not really sure why that is, but I’m not going to think about it now. Now, I’m going to use that to my own advantage.

I’m not all that different than any other man, with maybe the only difference being I write down what I think rather than keeping it all inside. So on this Father’s Day weekend, I’m going to tell you what I’m thinking, and I’m going to trust that you’ll know either your father or the father of your children is feeling the same way, even if they don’t always say it.

To the daughters out there:

Yes, we’re protective. And because of that, we’re hard on you. And as much as I would like to say that we’ll change that, I can’t. We won’t. We’ll always subliminally threaten your dates, we’ll always secretly distrust your husbands, and we’ll always think that no man is worthy of your love. We are or were hard on you in high school because we remembered well what we thought about as teenagers and how often we thought about it. We’re guys, and we know guys. That’s why we won’t change. You’re just going to have to deal with it.

We know early on that the day will come when you’ll give your heart to someone else. That Daddy will at some point vacate the pole position in your heart. We know it. It kills us anyway. Because no matter how old you are, in our minds you’re still in pigtails running to greet us at the door when we get home from work.

To the sons:

We’re harder on you, no doubt about it. We expect more, demand more, and need more. There is nothing in the world more difficult than raising a boy to be a man, if only because our culture now demands the opposite. There are a lot of people who’d rather boys remain boys, who believe that the strong, silent types are archaic and hurtful. They’re not. They’re needed. This world needs more men, men who will both love and fight, bend to God but never man, and dedicate their lives to standing for something bigger than themselves. Our country is defined not by its politicians or schools, not by opinions, but by the sort of men who walk its streets.

And to the wives of our children:

We don’t always show it, don’t always act it, but we take being the father of your children with the utmost seriousness. We work hard to provide for you, enduring things at our jobs that you cannot know because we don’t want to bother you with it. Yes, we know we should. But we also know that home is our haven, the one place where we can leave the world we hate for the world we love.

We’re quiet sometimes around our children. Withdrawn. We don’t mean to be. It’s just that they have managed to conjure within us a love we thought impossible, one that has taken us utterly by surprise. It’s a breathtaking love, what we feel for our children. And also frightening. Because we know what the world is like, we know what shadows lurk, and we know we are the ones responsible for keeping those shadows at bay.

Deep down, whether you know it or not, all we want is to be your knight. The one who protects you and our children, the one you feel safe with. All we do in life revolves around that one thought.

We want to be needed.

To be your hero.

To us, little else matters.

Filed Under: Fathers Day, parenting

Connect

Facebooktwitterrssinstagram

Copyright © 2021 · Author Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in