The Age of Man
February 1, 2012 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
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Though there are large gaps in my memory from my school years, I do remember that Mrs. Cole said we would all be happy by now. I remember her saying that and I remember it had been enough for my attention to drift away from the middle of a daydream. It’s seldom that reality is magical enough to trump fantasy, but that did.
Mrs. Cole called it The Age of Man (the name itself would sound magical enough to any seventh-grader), and she said it was nearing. Science and technology had planted seeds, she said. Had planted them for hundreds of years. And those seeds were growing even then, sprouting upwards and strong. And she said we would be the ones to harvest.
We. You and I.
This being the mid-eighties, Mrs. Cole qualified that statement by saying it would all be for naught if the Russkies started lobbing ballistic missiles at us from Moscow. She didn’t think that would happen, which I’m sure prevented more than a couple nightmares that night from the other kids in her class. We’d all pull through, she said. And more, we would all be blessed with a life that was far more glorious and far less painful. Medical advances would ensure that disease was eradicated. Life expectancy would rise past the century mark. Science would solve problems like famine and global warming. Reason would replace ignorance, ushering in a new golden age of peace.
The hungry would be fed.
The naked would be clothed.
We would long for nothing.
And on. And on.
That all sounded pretty good to me. Even now I remember that as one of the best days of school I ever had. I couldn’t wait for The Age of Man.
I suppose we’re still waiting. Almost thirty years later, not much has really changed. Science and technology have done a lot, no doubt about that, though it seems there’s always a catch. The Russkies have been replaced. The hungry are still hungry. The naked are still cold.
But maybe more than any of that, we still long.
I suppose Mrs. Cole has gone to her reward by now. I’m not sure if she puttered along long enough to see that she’d been wrong. A part of me wishes not. I think we should all pass on with hope still in our hearts, whatever hope that may be.
Had I been wise back then—had I known what I know now—I like to think I’d have raised my hand and gotten the chance to speak that day. I would have told Mrs. Cole that science and technology can do a great many things, but the faith we would come to place in them would be a faltering one. I’d tell her that deep down, we’re all drawn to a brighter sort of magic. We will always be more charmed by what could be than what is. Because we are made to long and wonder and ponder the Mystery, and the Mystery is something that no science and no technology can ever really answer.
That’s what I would tell her.
And then I’d say what Mrs. Cole has no doubt discovered for herself—that the whole of earth is still the very least of heaven.
Billy Coffey versus the vending machine
January 23, 2012 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
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Of course anyone with a modicum of junk food knowledge understands that Snickers is the best candy bar. Of that there can be no argument. And when one’s day has been so busy at work that any chance of a proper lunch break is thrown out the window, the vending machine in the next building becomes a kind of promised land, one that flows not with milk and honey, but chocolate and nougat.
Getting there from here, which is a rather modern-looking building on the northern end of a college campus, isn’t as easy as it sounds. Because as I said, I was busy. And more than that, I was hungry. I’d been up against it since seven o’clock, and my watch told me that it was a little after two-thirty. My head hurt. My skin felt as though it were beginning to crawl and feed upon itself. My stomach was somersaulting. My insides sounded like a raving pack of hyenas.
I needed a Snickers bar. Bad. In fact, it was quickly becoming apparent that I needed a Snickers bar or I was going to kill someone.
Thankfully, the hectic nature of my day relaxed enough to offer me just enough time to walk to the next building, get what amounted to my breakfast, and get back. I managed to scrounge up just enough change for the machine, not a penny more. I threw on my coat and hat and trudged through a twenty-degree wind chill that seemingly wanted nothing more than to turn me right back around to where I came from. By the time I neared the next building I was literally punching at the breeze in an attempt to fend it off.
I was HUNGRY, people.
The vending machine was on the third story of a building constructed just after the Civil War. No elevators. By the time I reached the third floor landing, I felt as though I’d just summited Everest.
And after all of that, all that work and all that hunger, I fished my seventy-five cents into the slot, chose C2 for my Snickers bar, and watched as the metal spool slowly drew that chocolately goodness toward me only to get hung up on the end.
I watched it as it dangled there, mocking me from the other side of a half-inch piece of Plexiglass, the bar turned sideways so that the S on the package curled into a cruel, sinister grin.
I’ve told you all of that in the hopes that what I say next will not alter your opinion of me, if indeed it is favorable.
Because I beat the holy snot out of that machine.
Oh yes I did. I rocked it, punched it, kicked it, tilted it, even head butted it. And in the process I came to realize that I was not doing so just because I was hungry (which was a good thing, seeing as how afterward my Snickers was still dangling from the metal spool on the end of C2) or even because I was mad.
No, I was physically assaulting an innocent metal box because I DESERVED that candy bar.
I didn’t get my Snickers that day. In fact, I drove home two hours later convinced that someone would find me alongside the road barbequing some innocent dairy farmer’s heifer.
It was tough, I tell you. But even tougher than that hunger was the knowledge that I’d done everything right. I’d put the right amount of money in that vending machine, chosen the right letter, picked the right number. I’d followed all the rules.
When you do the right thing and follow all the rules, you shouldn’t find your reward dangling on the other side of a piece of hardened plastic. You’re supposed to get your reward in hand and embrace the sublime satisfaction of enjoying it. Because that’s right. Because that’s what’s supposed to happen.
And I wonder now as I wondered then about all the others who’d had to learn that same lesson. About the ones who spent their lives working only to have their jobs snatched away or the ones who prayed and had those prayers go unanswered. I wondered about all the love that was given but not given back and all the hope that was lifted up only to come tumbling down.
We’re all hungry for something, that’s true. But our hunger isn’t what defines it. Our hunger doesn’t make us who we are.
No, who we are is what we choose to be when that something we hunger for tarries.
The boldness of youth
January 16, 2012 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
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Kid down the road got a new skateboard for Christmas, a bright red one with orange flames, white wheels, and tiny metal blocks underneath that spark when scraped against the pavement. He’s been riding around the neighborhood on it every day since. Doesn’t matter how cold it is or if the mountains have driven down black, snow-laced clouds. He’ll still ride by. Every day after school, and most every day during the weekend.
Of course the skateboard hasn’t faired well in the process. The red has now begun to fade, and the orange flames are now a dull ochre. The metal blocks will still spark—I can see them doing so in the early evenings as he rides by—but now they come more as puffs of light than showers of fire. I suppose this is by design. I’ve heard stakeboarders abhor the new and shiny. The used and scuffed is much more appealing.
I’ll watch him. I’ll even go so far as to say that once I see him pass my living room window once, I’ll pause at that window until he rides by again. It’s the way he does it, you see. The way he rides.
He’s not flashy. I’m not sure if this is his first board, though I’m inclined to believe it is. He’s of the age when the world widens at the seams and expands beyond his home and his block. He can ride now. He can explore. He can race down the slight incline of the hill and feel the wind in his face. It is freedom, and it is good.
It’s too bad that one of these days he’ll likely get clobbered by a passing vehicle. Again, it’s the way he rides—in the middle of the street, through stop signs, jumping curbs, like a miniature Evel Knievel. I don’t want you to believe I watch him out of some admiration, some envy. No, I watch him because I’m scared to death for him.
Also, because I used to be him.
Call it a boy thing, though I’m sure girls aren’t immune. They play and romp and do all manner of reckless things, all seemingly without care or thought of consequence, all because they are convinced of their immortality. Nothing will happen to them. Nothing can. Because they’re going to live forever.
That was me.
I once jumped off the roof of the house with an umbrella, thinking it would make a cool parachute. It didn’t work. Once I caught the breath that had been knocked out of me by the hard ground, I tried it again.
I once rappelled down a two-story set of stairs using a jump rope attached to a combination lock.
And there was the time when after watching a re-run of Happy Days, I tried jumping over four empty garbage cans on my bike. I managed one and a half.
Why did I do these things? Stupidity is the first thing that comes to mind (I had, and have, that in abundance). But the truth is that I honestly thought nothing could go wrong. Nothing bad would ever happen.
Now I’m older. Now I’m a husband and a father. Now I know the bad things that can and do happen, often without the slightest provocation, and often through no fault of my own. I think as we get older the glow in the world begins to fade and light because dusk. I think we begin to see shadows, that lurking What If. And I think we ponder the worst that can happen so much that the best that can happen goes ignored.
I think sometimes we worry so much about the traffic that we don’t allow ourselves to feel the wind in our face and know the freedom to simply be.
Age robs us of more than just our strength and our innocence. It also demands our boldness. If anything, that’s something I’d like to reclaim. I’d like to recapture that sense of immortality, even if it is a false one.
I know this: in a few short minutes I expect to see a young boy fly by on his skateboard, and when he does I will instinctively look for an approaching car. But I will also root him on, and I will see the wind in his face.
A world worth saving
January 9, 2012 by Billy Coffey · 1 Comment
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Piney Mills may sound like a good enough place to live—one of those neighborhoods that offer a mixture of Cape Cods and ranches and the occasional bricked manor home, all with the stars and bars hanging from a pole, each with mats at the front door that say WELCOME. But it’s not like that at all. Piney Mills is instead a sprawling trailer court just outside of town that borders an expanse of national forest that is largely untrodden save for moonshiners, meth dealers, and love-struck teenagers in search of somewhere private to do some heavy petting.
In other words, every town has that one place where you don’t go unless you absolutely have to. For my town, Piney Mills is that one place.
It was a favor for a friend that took me there a couple weeks ago. He had a sofa that needed to be moved, I had the truck to move it. It was a minor errand that would take no more than an hour, but I still dreaded the trip. Piney Mills is an underbelly. When you go there, it’s best to prepare yourself for the things you’ll likely see—the poverty, the want, the neglect, yes. But mostly it’s the crass, profane attitudes the people there have adopted, either because of the sorry states of their lives or their bleak prospects of their futures.
I wasn’t disappointed in that regard. The decayed (and bullet-ridden, I might add) wooden PINEY MILLS sign at the entrance was guarded by a boy no older than six. He was dressed in jeans that were a size too short and a stained sweatshirt that read AUSTIN 3:16 SAYS I JUST KICKED YOUR ASS that was at least three sizes too big. As I pulled from pavement to gravel, he looked at me and offered a tiny middle finger.
I wound my way along the park’s main avenue. Trailers in various states of disrepair offered clues as to what the inhabitants considered important and not. I saw a bevy of duct-taped windows, porches littered with empty beer cases, and pristine satellite dishes clinging to sagging roofs. What few people that mingled about in the cold stared through dead eyes with a mix of resignation and distrust.
The guilt I felt wasn’t because my life had been offered more, but that I had to go to a place like that to be reminded of it.
The sofa in question was colored in a microfiber lime green and seemed to weigh as much as the truck that would transport it. My friend and I managed to hook it out of the narrow doorway and into the bed without causing further damage to either. He offered me coffee that I eagerly accepted. We spent the next half hour talking on his front stoop.
There is a rhythm to every place, even a place like Piney Mills. As the minutes wore on and the talk drifted from Christmas to work, the neighborhood awoke to a point where I was tolerated if not accepted. A woman across the street came outside long enough to wave and ask if we needed further help with the sofa. The man in the trailer beside us walked out to fetch his morning paper. He wore a threadbare purple bathrobe and nothing more. That didn’t stop him from noticing the errant newspaper that straddled the boundary between his trailer and the next, which he promptly delivered to an expectant and thankful elderly woman next door. Children appeared to play football in the street. For a while, even in that sad place, there was the sound of laughter and fun.
I realized then that I’d been missing something besides that appreciation for my life’s bounty. It was an important lesson, one I think is worth sharing here. It is simply that there is still joy in this world, still beauty. Still good. We might believe those things to be sparse and that might be true, but I don’t think so. Even in Piney Mills, that place the local police know well, you can find glimpses of our better selves. You can be reminded that while we are all fallen, dirty, incorrigible people, we are also capable of good and laughter.
I’m going to remember that the next time I turn on the television or pick up a newspaper. I’m going to hang on to that notion the next time my eyes are drawn heavenward and I’m tempted to say Come now, just come on and put an end to all this mess.
Because this world is still worth saving. It’s still worth our faith. It’s still worth living in.
On settling and being settled
January 4, 2012 by Billy Coffey · Leave a Comment
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The thing about Troy Heatwole is that he’s settled. He’ll be the first to tell you that. Not outright, mind you. Troy never says anything outright and never has. He prefers instead to take the long way around to the point he’s trying to make. So instead of simply saying, “I’m settled,” he’ll say something like, “I ain’t as young as I used to be an’ I ain’t as smart, but the world’s quiet.”
And really, who doesn’t long for a quiet world?
Not that life doesn’t pose any challenges. Troy’s like all of us in that he has bills to pay and ends to meet. That’s not what I’m talking about when I say he’s settled. What I’m talking about is that Troy not only knows his place in the world, he’s accepted it with all the happiness and peace one could ask. There is no striving in him, no longing, no unmet expectations. Just a nice, peaceful quiet.
I say this because I want to say that I envy Troy Heatwole. Not so much for what he possesses (which isn’t much aside from a small cabin in the woods, a battered Ford truck, and a coon dog named Bo), but for what he has. There’s a difference between those things. What you possess can be taken from you. What you have can’t. And Troy possesses a settled life. I do not.
But that’s not really what I’m getting at, either. I suppose I’m taking a page out of Troy’s book—I’m taking the long way around to the point I’m trying to make. How else could I bring myself to admit that I’m envious of a man whose life, settled or not and quiet or not, revolves around cleaning and draining septic tanks?
Oh yes, that’s right. Troy’s the septic man.
It isn’t that he loves his job. He does, however, find a purpose in it. Because just as Troy once told me that “Even the Lawd woulda had trouble lovin to do what I do,” he also said that, “Dis here world’s fulla crap, an’ somebody’s gotta clean it all up.” Wise words, those. Kind of makes you think.
I pass Troy on the road often. Our workdays tend to end around the same time and converge at a stoplight just outside of town. He usually gets the green while I’m stuck at the red. He blows by in his big pumper truck, windows down and long stringy hair waving in the breeze. And smiling, always smiling, because Troy has a quiet life and he’s settled.
Me, I’m not.
That’s not a big deal, I guess, assuming you’re not closing in on 40 and you don’t have a family and a mortgage. All of which describes me. If I’m ever going to be settled, this should be the time when I should get started. But I can’t. Even though I’ve been blessed with much, I can’t escape the feeling there’s more out there I should be shooting for. There are other lands to travel and other things to do and other Me’s to be. I want to settle and yet I feel I shouldn’t settle for less than I should.
That, in a nutshell, is why I’m envious of Troy the septic man. He has no need to ponder such things. He’s found his life. He doesn’t have to wander anymore.
But there are times when he passes me at the stoplight after a long day and I see his hair waving and his face smiling and I think differently. I think that maybe I have it all backwards. Maybe we should all be craving to be a little more than what we are. Maybe we should all be wanting to grow a little more each day.
Deep down we all want to be settled, but that may be more a trap than a treasure.
Maybe only as far as we’re unsettled is there any hope for us.
Changing the world
November 7, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
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My daughter wants to change the world.
She’s nine, only a couple months removed from ten—that age when the world reveals itself to be a bit darker and more foreboding than once imagined, but it still retains a hue of rainbows and promise.
She’s studied history and knows about things like wars and slavery. She catches snippets of the news and sees the hunger and the hate. She knows what rape means. A few weeks ago, someone in her classroom was caught selling weed.
“Marijuana is bad, Daddy,” she told me. I told her yes, it was.
Much of me says it’s too early for any of this. I didn’t know what marijuana was until I was well into my teens, and my childhood was largely spent pondering the hitch in my baseball swing than the socio-economic ills of modern society. But these are different times, I suppose. Everything seems to be happening so fast. You try to let your kids be kids, but the world gets in the way.
My daughter, she doesn’t hide from any of this. Sometime in the last few years the thin veil that hangs over the world slipped away and revealed its true face to her, and she did not look away in horror. She was not afraid. She simply saw that something was broken and knew she was the one to fix it.
I can understand this. From the time I was eighteen until almost thirty, I felt the same way. I was going to be the one to fix the world. I was going to be the one to make a difference. And I acted as such in my own warped, disillusioned way until the day I realized just how tiny and powerless I was.
My daughter will learn that one day, too. I suppose I could try and soften that blow now, gently tell her that she isn’t all she thinks herself to be, but I won’t. There are things best learned while standing and things you can only learn after a fall. That lesson is of the latter. Most of the important ones are.
But on the other side of that she will learn one of the more valuable lessons in life, and that is that none of us can change the world. It is too big. We are too small. It has always been that way, and it always will.
That’s no cause for surrender, though. That’s what I’ll tell my daughter. That’s what I discovered for myself. Because even if we can’t change the whole world, we can change tiny pieces of it. We can change the small part of the universe around us. We may not be able to save millions, but we may be able to save one.
It’s the small scale that counts—doing the little things in a big way. Maybe one day my daughter will cure cancer or end hunger and make it rain in the desert. Maybe she will fight for peace where there is war and teach people to replace hate with love. But in the meantime, she can smile at a stranger and say hello. She can plant a flower where there is only muddy soil. She can choose to believe and not doubt.
In the end, that’s all we can do.
The last thing I’d ever write
November 2, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 87 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.
The post I almost didn’t write
September 12, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 9 Comments
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I almost didn’t write a post about 9/11 this year. That would’ve been a first for me since beginning this blog. Sometimes it was a post, sometimes a video, but it was always something. If not on 9/11, then right around that time.
But this time I thought maybe not, even though it’s been ten years now. A decade. Anyone else feel as strangely about that as I do? I’ve read that scientists are studying why it seems that time speeds up as we grow older. Something in the brain, if I remember correctly. Some chemical or a certain pattern of neurons. Regardless, I remember a time when my days seemed to stretch on into forever. Now they pass so quickly. If there is anything I miss about childhood, it’s that sense of earthly eternity—that permanence.
That’s one reason I wanted to let this 9/11 pass. It feels like only yesterday I sat on the edge of my bed and watched those towers bleed fire and ash. Watched those poor souls jump from stories high, choosing death by gravity over death by immolation. Even now I see them. Those images will haunt me for the rest of my days. But I did not see that yesterday, I saw that ten years ago, and so much has happened since.
Another reason was how politicized the commemoration of 9/11 has become, how over-the-top. I hear religious leaders are not allowed to speak at Ground Zero this year, nor firefighters, nor policemen. I don’t understand how that could be. Then again, I don’t understand much these days. Sometimes I feel as though we’re all galloping toward some final end, and the ones leading the charge are the ones who are supposed to be protecting us.
But mostly, I wanted to let this 9/11 pass because of how strongly I still feel about it. To this day I cannot see an image of those ash-covered people fleeing for their lives or hear Alan Jackson’s “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” or be reminded of the phrase “Let’s roll” without feeling my eyes sting and my throat tighten. Ten years seems a long time to hang on to such emotions. There comes a point when the mourning must stop and time must continue on. We all must learn to let go. After all, life is a straight line. It isn’t a circle.
That’s why I didn’t want to write anything.
And yet here I am, doing just that.
Because no matter how well-intentioned the people who say it’s time to get over it and move on may be, I know I never will. There are some things that should not be whisked away into the haze of our yesterdays to fuse with other memories until it becomes more fiction than fact. There are some stories that should continue to be told and retold not out of a sense of anger, but a sense of honor.
It is human nature to want to set aside pain and cover up old wounds. It is also human nature to hold onto those things because they are a reminder of both the coldness of this world and the faith we must possess to live upon it.
I could forget. I could move on. I could bow my head each September 11 and pause, and then I could move on as if it were any other day.
But I’m afraid if I do I will also forget the men and women who ran toward those flames rather than away.
I will forget an outpouring of love and kindness, of unity, that I had never experienced in my country.
I will forget the stories I heard like the man who believes he was guided to safety by an angel and the man who chose to stay and die in the North Tower rather than abandon his wheelchair-bound friend.
I’m afraid that I will forget not only the horror, but the wonder as well.
Because on that day ten years ago I saw what evil there lurked in the souls of men, and I also saw what grace abides there, too.
A precipitous balancing act
August 29, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
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This past weekend, I got the hammock out.
Strung it between two trees in the backyard under a warm August sun. Just me and the sky.
There’s a lot to be said for a good hammock. Back when I was a young and single man, the bedroom of my tiny apartment was graced with one. I had no bed, I had a hammock. And I rocked myself to sleep every night dreaming I was on some warm and secluded beach far away. When my girlfriend agreed to become my wife, she said the hammock had to go. It was just as well. Eventually, you have to put the old things aside in favor of the new.
But sometimes those old things come back, if only for an afternoon. It had been a long, difficult week. I needed a break. My sunny disposition had turned sullen, and I had a serious case of the Grouchies. I needed to rock myself and dream of warm beaches to chase the pessimism away.
The knots were good, the hammock threads still strong. I moved to one tree and set my leg in the middle.
Leaned over.
Lifted my other leg off the ground.
Fell.
And by that, I mean tumbled. Hard. I did a complete three-sixty in the air and landed on my neck. I couldn’t breathe for thirty seconds.
Tried it again—setlegleanoverliftleg. Fell. It was an even worse fall that time, so bad that I actually did see warm beaches and thought I’d died.
The third attempt almost never happened. By then I was reciting the old adage of fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. To the best of my recollection, there was no fool me three times because no one in history had been so stupid to try it again.
But I did. I really wanted to chase that pessimism away, and I really wanted to do it in my old hammock.
I moved to one tree and set my leg in the middle.
Leaned over.
Lifted my other leg off the ground. Slow, nice and slow, and…there. I’d made it.
Wasn’t easy, though. I’d forgotten that the thing about sitting in a hammock was just how difficult it was. Whatever stability you may find won’t last long. A breeze will kick up or you’ll sneeze or you’ll scratch a sudden itch, and for the next moments you’ll be fighting both gravity and inevitability.
The trick isn’t just learning how to get into a hammock, the trick is learning how to stay there. How to keep your balance. And the way you do that is simple—realizing you can tumble at any moment. You can tumble and you can have no understanding of why.
The best way to handle that knowledge, to maintain that balance, is to accept it and tuck it into a corner of your mind. Because the only way you can keep yourself from falling is by understanding that falling is a perpetual possibility.
Sounds pessimistic, I know. But it’s true. I laid there in that hammock for three hours counting the clouds and never fell once, all because I kept in my head I was always one twitch away from doing so.
I dreamed of faraway beaches, places where stress was a foreign word and time didn’t matter, where the sun was always warm. And yet I was allowed to dream of all that optimism because of the cynicism that held me in place.
Which got me thinking. Maybe the sadness we feel can teach us just as much as the happiness we want. Maybe God at times uses our doubt more than our faith. Maybe the best will happen and maybe the worst, and maybe the best we can hope for in this life is a strange and mysterious mix of the two.
I suppose we’ll all find out in the by and by. But for now, I’m sticking with this—the best way to rock away a warm afternoon is to know it can all tumble down.
This teeter totter life
August 24, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 22 Comments
- image courtesy of photobucket.com
I spent much of last Friday at the hospital with my wife, who had been feeling particularly ucky of late. The doctors had (and as I write this have) no idea what’s wrong. Tests were in order. So off we went, her to be poked and prodded for two hours, and me to pass the time in the waiting room.
As I am not a fan of feeling ucky or being poked and prodded, hospitals rank just above funeral homes on my list of Places I Wish Not To Go. It isn’t the germs that bother me, not the echoes of coughs or the abundance of wheel chairs and gurneys. It’s the despair, I think. That thick dark cloud of inevitability that seems to hang over everyone and everything. Going to the hospital makes me confront the fragility of life. That’s something I’d rather not consider.
I brought enough work to keep my mind off things. I knew the waiting area had a television, but the possibility of watching Sportscenter all morning quickly evaporated when I was told the only channel offered was HGTV (according to the nice old lady with the clipboard, anything else may be construed as “controversial.”) I had a notebook—1,000 words a day every day is what I was taught, even when you’re sitting in a hospital—and my i-Pod—the new Trace Adkins album? Gold.
I was ready, oh yes I was. The only pondering of life and death that day would come from my characters rather than myself. Yes sir, I was going to mind my own business.
The only thing I didn’t take into account was that there would be other people in need of the sort of modern medical technology that only the local hospital’s radiology department could provide. Though the waiting room was relatively empty when we arrived, by the time my wife’s name was called, it was nearly full. And five minutes later, I had company.
The woman who sat down beside me with the crutches looked eighty but swore she wasn’t a day over fifty-seven. We exchanged hellos and I resumed my scribbling. She asked what I was doing. I said work (never say you’re a writer, I was taught that as well). She nodded and leafed through a ten-month-old magazine for exactly thirty seconds, at which time she sat it back down on the wooden table between us and asked what was wrong with me.
“I don’t think you’d have the time,” I joked.
She chuckled and touched my arm—eighty-year-old women who swear they’re not a day over fifty-seven love to touch arms—and said, “I mean what brings you here?”
“My wife’s getting a once-over,” I told her. “You?”
She tapped the crutches and then felt her leg. “Busted myself. Fell down the stairs. I blame the cat.”
“Cats are evil,” I said.
She gave me a knowing smile.
“Cats are not evil,” said the woman across from us. A sling was wrapped around her neck which made her left arm form an L. She looked as though she were leaning on an invisible fence post. “I have three, and they’re darlings.”
“Bet your cat did that to your arm,” I said.
“Nope. I fell out of a wheelbarrow.”
“Pardon?” the woman beside me said.
“Yep, wheelbarrow.” She looked down at her arm and up to us. The look on her face was a mix of embarrassment and pride. “My son said I was too chicken to let him push me down the hill in it. Guess I showed him, huh?”
“Guess so,” I said.
The man to her left had been listening this whole time under the guise of being immersed in his sports magazine. I doubt any of us thought he was actually reading it. Hard to do with a neck brace.
“I did that once,” he said. “Made it down our hill just fine. Shut that cocky son of mine’s mouth up, sure enough. I don’t take chances anymore, though.”
“What happened to you?” the old lady beside me asked.
“This?” He pointed to the brace, just in case she were asking of anything else. “I got up off the couch. Seriously. All I did. Felt something pull, just…pop goes the weasel.”
I never got any writing done. It was better to sit and talk, I think. Better to be reminded of the fragility of life, that strange thing that seems so hard but is instead so soft. I was reminded of just how clumsy we all are and how we can get hurt even when we take no chances.
Because our existence is but a thin strip of breath upon which we teeter and totter and, eventually, will tumble off.
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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