Getting what we’re owed
November 21, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 15 Comments
image courtesy of globalpost.com
“Hmph” is all he says, and barely that.
Just a bit of air expelled through two tautened lips. He could say more—wants to, I’m sure—but the presence of two grandchildren in the room prevents any further commentary. That’s a shame. You’ve never fully appreciated the news until you’ve watched it alongside my father’s commentary.
The pictures on the television are the sort that’s been played and replayed for a while now—tents and marches and protest, people with microphones shouting down with this and up with that. It’s all a little too much, especially with the grandkids sitting there (right now they’re working on the Play-Doh, but I know they’re watching the screen).
I ask him if I should turn the channel. He works the chaw of Beechnut in his cheek and shakes his head. “Wanna see who won the race,” he says.
So I watch the screen and I watch him and I watch my kids and I know that I am in the middle. I’m the bridge between him and them. I’m the link to hold the chain. And I realize that it really wasn’t that long ago—if you can call twenty years long—that I was sure my father had no idea what the world was all about.
I think your teenage years are proof that the more you think you know, the dumber you really are.
My kids—his grandkids—are watching now. They’re showing a policeman pepper-spraying a young man with long hair. Dad watches, too. I’m wondering what they’re all thinking and if what they’re thinking is pretty much the same. I think so. I think when you get right down to it, crazy looks crazy no matter what age you are.
In the end (and as it should), Play-Doh wins out over the news. The kids don’t care what’s happening a thousand miles away in some city. Their world’s here in the mountains, where things are quiet and life makes more sense. But Dad, he keeps watching and working that chaw, turning it around in his mouth, thinking.
He’s been in a good mood lately. Not that he isn’t usually, just more so now. After thirty-five years of work, he has only three days left. Appropriately enough, Thanksgiving Day will be his first day of retirement.
It hasn’t been easy, those thirty-five years. The ones before it weren’t easy, either. He took the job for the same reason that many husbands and fathers do—because it paid well and offered a better life for his family. Certainly it wasn’t because he enjoyed it—who would enjoy driving a rig up and down the Southeast, being separated from family, living off greasy truck stop food?
But he did it anyway. Day in, day out, through blizzards and tornados and hurricanes and floods. As a child I would pray every night for his safety. I still do. And God’s watched over him—Dad’s driven over three million miles without an accident. Back in ’98, he had a stroke just outside of Fredericksburg. The doctors couldn’t understand how he managed to drive his rig into the terminal and back it up to the dock before falling out of the cab. I could. It was his job, simple as that.
His formal education ended at the eighth grade. He grew up in poverty and hustled pool, but the Army straightened him out. And when it came time to marry and start a family, he swore he would give his kids a better life than he had.
That’s exactly what he did.
On the television, one of the protesters says he’s there because he wants a free education. He’s owed that, he says, though he doesn’t really say why. Dad doesn’t say what he thinks of that, and I’m thankful. If he did, I’d have to write it with a lot of ampersands and exclamation points.
Because Dad and his eight-grade education knows more about the world than the people on television and their college degrees. Because he knows that no one is owed anything, and the sooner you realize that the better off you’ll be. Because you have to work and scrape and save and drive the truck.
He won’t say that only those who have stood up to work should have the right to sit down and protest. The grandkids are in the room.
So I’ll just say it for him. Because after thirty-five years, I think he’s earned it.
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.
Hidden treasures
September 19, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 7 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
If you would by chance happen to knock at my front door and ask to see where I keep my most prized possessions, I would lead you to my upstairs attic, pull the string on the exposed light bulb, and point to a spot along the far wall just beneath the vent leading outside.
There you would see an old toolbox, battered and rusty from years of use. The chipped green paint and rusted hinges may lead you to believe its contents are inconsequential at least and forgotten at most.
You would be wrong.
What’s inside that toolbox represent my life’s more memorable moments. A gum wrapper, some pine needles, a spent ring from a cap gun, and so on. Like I said, my most prized possessions. Knowing they’re up there makes me feel a little more comfortable being down here.
My mother has something similar, though her toolbox is disguised as a hope chest that sits in the corner of her bedroom closet. Inside you’ll find old report cards, forgotten toys, and pictures. Lots of pictures.
My father opts to store his keepsakes in the top drawer of his dresser, which had for years been strictly off limits to my prying hands until last week, when I summoned the courage to ask permission to rifle through its contents. I found old coins and older knives, one gun, several bundled letters I did not read, one wooden cross, and more old pictures.
I asked around, and most everyone had their own places for such things hidden somewhere out of sight. People have confessed to stashing their tokens of both past and present in socks and safe deposit boxes, cookie jars and coffee cans. One friend even stored his the old fashioned way—under the mattress of his bed.
Each admitted that no one else would be much interested in their private treasures. Again, none of them could be defined as valuable. Not on the surface, anyway. But beneath? Beneath they were priceless. I could tell they were by the hushed tones and soft smile they would offer along with their confession, as if the telling conveyed some holy secret.
Which I suppose is exactly the case. Handling those relics of the things we hold most dear often takes on the appearance of religious ritual. Touching a memory can be a powerful experience. An old photograph may not represent a mere moment in time, but a token that love is something worth holding onto. And a trinket may not be a trinket, but a symbol that faith does indeed move mountains.
We should consider these things holy. We are, after all, the sum of our experiences. We need those reminders lest we blur our today and cloud our tomorrow. We need to know where we’ve come from if we’re to know where we’re going.
One person I asked had things a little more figured out than the rest of us. A full-blooded Sioux, his people have had much experience in placing great meaning on physical objects. When I asked him where he kept his most precious things, he pulled his T shirt down and pulled out a leather necklace. On the end was a small beaded pouch that was fringed at the bottom.
“Here,” he said. “I keep them here.”
I told him about my toolbox, about the hopes chest and dresser drawer and socks and coffee cans. I even told him about my friend the mattress stuffer. He nodded and smiled, then said, “We all have our sacred things. But you keep yours hidden and far away. What good will they do you there? Why not keep them visible and close instead?”
I opened my mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He was right. Everyone I had talked to kept their treasures hidden away in the darkness of a chest or drawer. Myself included.
Why? Was it because we felt them too valuable to risk the light of day? Or too fragile to be handled often?
I wasn’t sure. But I began thinking about the things our treasures represent, the love and the faith. And I began thinking that often they, too, go hidden and unused. We tuck them away for fear that they are too valuable or fragile, when they are the very things we should carry close to us every day.
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.
Time well wasted
June 20, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 19 Comments
I bought a cheap watch from a crazy man
Floating down Canal.
It doesn’t use numbers or moving hands,
It always just says Now.
Now you may be thinking that I was had,
But this watch is never wrong.
And If I have trouble the warranty said
‘Breathe in, breathe out, move on.’—Jimmy Buffett
I spent last week on vacation. Traded seven days of Virginia Mountains for seven days of North Carolina beaches. Emerald Isle, to be exact. If there was ever a name more fitting of its location, it’s that.
I’d spent a good four months looking forward to the trip. It’s been a tough time at work, a tough time all around, and of course everyone knows the cure for a tough time is an easy place.
But the truth? As the day of our departure drew closer, I didn’t want to leave. There was so much that needed to be done. So much that must be finished or started or continued. Dropping everything to sit in the sand seemed a little selfish and irresponsible. I was too busy to go on vacation. That’s not to say I thought the world would fall apart in my absence. I guess it had more to do with the notion that I’d held on tight for so long that I’d forgotten the value in letting go.
And there is value in letting go. There’s a lot.
At some point we’re all introduced to the fact that we do not make the world spin. But in this age of technological wonder where so many of us are driven—and at times even expected—to share our thoughts and happenings to the world with a simple click of a button, it’s easy to convince yourself that even if you don’t make the world spin, it will nonetheless go wobbly without you. I won’t say I fell for that lie. I will say I was headed in that general direction.
I spend much of my life on the written page. I count that as a blessing rather than a curse. And yet after so much time spent looking outward at the world, I found I was losing a bit of me in the process. Over the past year I have heard from a great many people about a great many things, and yet I realized I rarely heard from myself about the things that mattered most.
In the end that’s why I fled to the ocean, that vast expanse of nothingness that is so big it drowns out the little things and renders the big things bare. No writing, no news, no computer. Just deer, crabs, and the three dolphins that played tag just beyond the waves each morning outside my window.
And you know what I found when I returned home? That I didn’t miss much. Anthony Weiner resigned. More jobs were lost. There were floods and drought. Wars. Accusations. More of the same. The earth spun and I followed, though for seven precious days I chose to trail at my own speed rather than to flail at keeping up with everyone and everything else.
What I learned there will likely fill these pages for the time being. There’s much to ponder and memories to sift. My week at the shore resembled a fine wine in that the flavor is only truly tasted upon swallowing.
In the meantime, I leave you with this:
It isn’t how full our days are that matter, but how fully we live them.
Not how fast we go, but how closely we look.
Not how much we hear, but how often we listen.
Not how often we laugh more than cry, but how often we’re willing to do both.
Time well spent is valuable, but so is time well wasted. I know that now. Because it’s in those minutes and hours that we are still and quiet and watching and listening that the truths we seek are made manifest. They appear like glistening shells washed upon endless shores, offerings for the taking.
Before I left I was convinced that wealth was best measured in happiness and peace and good memories. I know better now.
I know now that wealth is best measured in moments.
Planning for reality
April 6, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Despite the fact it snowed last weekend, I’m still told spring is on the way. There is enough evidence of that to give me hope. The robins have returned, for one. Baseball season is officially underway. And I am getting ready for a vacation.
Looks like the family will be heading to Emerald Isle, North Carolina sometime this summer. Never been, and I’m looking forward to it. It’s a ways, of course—seven hours or so on the road. Which means there’s a lot to plan.
Temporarily moving both myself and my family seven hours to the south and east is quite the undertaking. There are reservations to make and deposits to send. Routes to map out. Prescriptions to have in hand. Lists to make. Eventualities for which to prepare. The logistics can be overwhelming. It’s almost as if the Coffeys are preparing to land at Normandy. I’ve even resorted to buying a notebook so I can keep track of things.
I’m sure your household isn’t much different. There’s a lot involved in planning for a vacation. And though all that planning isn’t what I’d call fun, it isn’t work, either. Sorting out where we’ll go and what we’ll do makes me think of hot sand and warm water, and that’s a comfort in the midst of this cold Virginia March.
Lately I’ve been wondering about all this planning, though. Not the necessity of it, but why I don’t do more of it elsewhere. I can tell you with exact precision where I’ll be on a North Carolina beach in a few months, but not where I’ll be tomorrow. I can tell you what I’ll do then, but not what I’m going to do now. And I can describe my vacation goals (they’re on page 3 of my notebook), but I’d be hard pressed to tell you what my goals are for this afternoon.
See what I mean? I have discovered the great shame of my life, and it is this—I plan my vacations better than I plan my life.
The opposite should be true, right? But it isn’t. I justify everything I’m doing now by telling myself that vacation comes only once a year for me, and for only a week. Better make it count, then. Better make it as wonderful as I can, because for the next 358 days after, the memory of it is going to have to hold me over.
And while that makes a certain degree of sense, it’s the sort of reasoning that falls apart when you look at it hard enough. Isn’t it kind of ridiculous to spend so much of my time planning on one week out of the year when there are fifty-one other weeks that should demand just as much attention? How much better would my life be if I thought of every week as a vacation week, here once and then never here again?
It’s a question I’m sure to ponder for a long while, and one I think we all should. We let too many of our days pass us by with the false promise that tomorrow is sure to come. As much as I’m all for slowing down, I do think a healthy sense of urgency is required for any good life. It passes so fast. We assume time is on our side. It isn’t. Every tick of the clock, every beat of the heart, is one less moment we have.
I’ll have to keep that in mind, that and the knowing that it is much easier to plan an escape from reality than to plan for reality itself.
You only go around once
April 4, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 21 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
A favorite saying of my mother: “You only go ’round this life once.”
Drilled into my head since I was a boy. It was a warning, though one I never truly heeded because it was only partially understood. “You only go ’round this life once” was sort of like my father’s “You can’t see the forest for the trees.” Catchy, but vague.
I’m going to be thirty-nine this summer, which is just close enough to forty to get me worrying. Not that I fret too much about the grinding of the wheels of time. Forty doesn’t mean as much as it used to. In fact, I’ve read that forty is the new thirty. That’s supposed to make me feel better, I suppose. And it does. But still…
It’s fair to say that forty can be considered a good halfway point in most people’s lives. That’s about the point where a lot of us look back over our shoulders and realize there’s a whole lot behind us, then look ahead and swear we can see a speck of something on the horizon. And though death’s great sting isn’t as great as I once thought it to be, I still feel like there’s a lot left for me to do.
And lately I’ve come to realize the gravity of the fact I only go ’round this life once. Time, now, is the issue. Much more now than it’s ever been.
But it’s not just the time I have left to do things I’ve always wanted to do, it’s the time I have left to fix the things I’ve broken. I’ve broken a lot of things in my life. Done things I shouldn’t, said things I shouldn’t. I look back on a lot of my past not in reverie, but in regret. So much so that I now find myself at this magical midpoint thinking a do-over of my first forty years would be nice.
I think about all the time I’ve wasted. Not just wasted by watching television or daydreaming on the front porch, but wasted by worry and fear. Often I realize I have lived vast parcels of my life in reverse and upside down—the things that really should have bothered me never did, and the things that really bothered me were things that didn’t shouldn’t have bothered me at all.
I still act like this. A lot.
But now I’m beginning to realize I shouldn’t, that life is too short and too precious to be mindful of tiny irritations and bothersome fears. The first half of one’s life is viewed through the lens of ourselves—our needs, our wants, our desires. The second half is viewed through the lens of eternity. That’s when we begin to see that as big as this world can seem, it’s really the smallest thing we will ever experience.
I wish I could have figured all of this out earlier. Time and experience have a way of teaching us what we’ve always ignored, though. I spend a lot of my day with people who say if there was a God, He would do something about all of the pain in the world. I tell them I stumble over that sometimes too, but that I also understand if it weren’t for the pains in my own life, I wouldn’t know anything.
That part, at least, I’ve gotten right.
But there is much I haven’t.
It seems a bit pessimistic to be looking ahead at my coming years with the express purpose not to screw them up as badly as I managed the previous ones. That’s what I’m going to do, though. And I’m going to try and love more and worry less. I’m going to try to have faith instead of fear. And I’m going to make the attempt to smile as much in the pain as in the happiness.
Because my mother was right, you only go ’round this life once.
But if you do it right, once is all you’ll need.
Life is a gift to be treasured.
***
This post is part of the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival: Treasure hosted by my friend Peter Pollock. For most posts about Treasure, please visit him at PeterPollock.com
Go out in the world and live
March 28, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 17 Comments
photo by Aaron Jarrad
The story in the newspaper was accompanied by a photo of the street on which she was last seen. It was that eerie time just after the earthquake and before the wave hit. Taylor was riding her bicycle home from an elementary school in the city of Ishinoma-ki.
Use your imagination, and you will see houses and storefronts and perhaps children playing on the street corners. You will see that strange combination of resistance and joy that defines human life everywhere, that sort that makes you feel melancholy but happy to be alive.
That’s not the picture the photograph displays, however. All you see is death and destruction.
Though I do my best not to, all I can think of is her last thoughts as that wall of water came rushing toward her. I like to think it was fast. I like to think it was over before she knew it was upon her and that she didn’t suffer.
Derek Kannemeyer is a French and English teacher at St. Catherine’s, the school which Taylor once attended. In the article, he described his former student’s philosophy of life this way:
“You’ve got to go out in the world and live.”
This is the first time I’ve written about the events in Japan. I’ve wanted to ever since it happened, but I just…couldn’t. There are a great many things in this world meant to be written about by better writers than I, and what happened in Japan is one of those things. It raises questions in me about the things I believe and why I believe them. I’ve done my fair share of questioning God and shaking my fist at Him.
You should know better, I tell Him. Why didn’t You do something?
People smarter than me have been asking that question for a very, very long time. I suppose they always will.
Me, I have no answers. There is a lot in Christianity that must be accepted on faith. It is a rock you can break yourself against, that can tear you to pieces, unless you realize there are answers only God can know and you never will.
I still struggle with that.
But today I am thinking of Taylor Lane Anderson, whose life was cut short by shaking earth and raging ocean, but who still chased and managed to grab hold of her dreams. Her death was a sad tragedy, but knowing she died doing what she loved somehow takes a bit of the sting away. In the end, death that comes out of fulfilling our purpose is something to which we should all aspire.
I still question God. I doubt neither His existence nor His love, but I do His ways. They are higher than my ways, Isaiah said, as His thoughts are higher than my thoughts. I believe that. But believing that also brings a mixture of calm and fear, and I don’t believe I’m the only one to feel such things.
It is a scary time to be alive. There just seems to be so much going on—so much bad. There are days when I feel as though a black cloud hangs over this world, rumbling and swirling and ready to dump catastrophe upon us all. It’s easy to wake up in the morning and wonder, “What’s next?”
I’m sure I’ll wonder what’s next again, sure I’ll look up hoping to see the light and instead see that black, swirling cloud. When I do, I’m going to remember Taylor Lane Anderson. I’m going to remember the way she lived her life.
Because no matter what happens, no matter what fear entangles us, we’ve got to go out in the world and live.
Not only survive. Not just get by.
Live.
The changing tides
March 14, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 16 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
June 1992:
Everyone’s telling us to leave, but we’ve already decided that’s not an option. Vacation comes once a year, which means I can only see the ocean once a year, and I didn’t make the four-hour drive from the mountains to the coast just to turn around and go home. Besides, what will soon rage outside is just a tropical storm. It’s not like it’s violent enough to be considered a hurricane.
And there is a strange beauty in all this swirl. The thin line on the horizon that usually separates sapphire water from cobalt sky is gone. Before me instead is a gray that gives the illusion of hole a torn in the universe that threatens to swallow us all.
The boardwalk is empty save for the brave and the stupid. I wander about, unsure if I should be included in the former or the latter. The tide flexes and roars, sending water where beach should be and breakers over the guardrails. Policemen in SUVs rove as sentinels, shouting in loudspeakers over the wind and rain for everyone to seek shelter.
I linger nonetheless, awed by the power of the sea and the smallness of myself. I grip the bench in front of me and squeeze as a sudden gale threatens to send me backward, rain now falling sideways, at first kissing and then slapping my face, and I celebrate that I am alive.
Blue lights in the distance to my left and sirens to my right converge in front of my hotel. Police and rescue personnel pour out of flung-open doors, their binoculars fixed outward toward the raging water. One of them brings a bullhorn to his mouth. Says, “Return to shore immediately.”
I crane my neck around them, out towards the gray hole in the universe. A lone figure on a surfboard pops out among the whitecaps. Swallowed. Pops up once more. He sees the flashing blue lights and the man yelling at him. Reaches up with an arm and waves. Behind him comes a swell that seems stories high. He paddles after it, grips the sides of his board as the wave lifts him. He is to his feet, his arms outstretched, as if hugging the storm itself. Even in the wind and the rain, all this howl, I can hear his joy.
The wave deposits him close to shore but too far for the police to reach him. The man with the bullhorn tries once more—“Return to shore. NOW.” The surfer pauses, stares at us, and smiles. He turns to head back into the maelstrom. One more wave, he asks the storm. Just one more.
When it is over, the police handcuff him and unceremoniously toss his board into the back of an SUV. It’s an unfortunate end to his glorious morning. But I see the smile on his face as he’s placed into custody, and it’s a smile that says it was all worth an arrest.
And as I watch them leave, I know I would say the same.
March 2011:
The weather outside my window this morning reminds me of that long-ago day—gray skies, sideways rain, a gale that rattles the windows. The wavy horizon I’m used to seeing of sapphire mountains and cobalt sky is now a gray tear in my world.
I stand and stare, a cup of coffee in my hand. My thoughts drift back to the man on the surfboard, out there that day in a tempest of water and wind, all to catch that one big wave and to celebrate that he was alive.
I remember what I thought as well, that his deed was a noble one. Not in the eyes of the law, perhaps, but in the laws of existence. I remember envying his courage and the will with which he embraced that one small moment.
Yet as I sip and stare I realize how much I’ve changed in the years since. If I would stand and watch that man dance amongst the waves at thirty-eight instead of nineteen, I would see him as more dunce than hero. Far from believing he was embracing his life, I would think he was spoiling in an act both dangerous and stupid.
I would watch the policemen cuff him and take him to jail, and I would say he’d gotten what he deserved.
That’s what I would think now, and it is not what I thought then.
And honestly, I do not know if that should make me mourn or rejoice.
Johnny’s fear
January 7, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 12 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Let me tell you about Johnny.
I met him when I was eight. It was during Bible school, those dreaded five days during the summer when you’re trying to fight the sensation that you’re back in school because you’re afraid God will be mad at you if you feel that way.
He was sitting under the big oak tree by himself, which was where the wayward softball Brent Stinnett hit landed. I was playing centerfield, so I was the one who retrieved it. I asked Johnny to toss it to me. He wouldn’t, so I got it myself. Then I asked if he wanted to play.
“No,” he said.
“Why not?”
Johnny lowered his head and kicked at a root jutting up from the ground, then shrugged.
“Come on,” I said. “It’s fun.”
“No,” he said again.
So I left him there under the oak.
I found him in the same spot the next day for the same reason (that Brent Stinnett could really pound a softball). This time, Johnny was first:
“I don’t want to play,” he said.
“I didn’t ask if you wanted to,” I told him.
“Well, just in case you were gonna, I don’t want to.”
I suppose the Christian thing would have been for me to befriend Johnny right then and there, or at least do a bit of gentle prodding to see what was really bothering him. But I was your average eight-year-old boy, which often means doing the Christian thing is not nearly as important as playing a game of softball.
Besides, by then the chattering had gone around the Bible school playground that Johnny wouldn’t play because he was afraid. Of what, no one was certain.
By day three, I’d learned that when Brent Stinnett came up to the plate, I should back up. So I did, right next to Johnny under his tree.
“Are you really scared like all the kids say?” I asked him.
Silence. Which to me even then meant yes.
“You ain’t gotta be scared. It’s just a game.”
“I ain’t scared,” he said. Then, as if remembering he was in Bible school and thus that God was watching, he added, “Much. I ain’t scared much.”
“What are you scared of?”
“Lots of things,” he said. “Falling down. Striking out. Getting hurt. Hitting somebody. Getting my clothes dirty. Getting stung by a bee. I’m allergic to bees, you know.”
I didn’t know, but at that moment Brent Stinnett flew out to left field and the inning was over. I jogged back toward the field and shouted at Johnny over my shoulder, “You’re just thinkin’ too much.”
Johnny never did play softball that year. Or any other, as a matter of fact. But he did keep coming to church, and it didn’t take me long to realize he was afraid of much more than playing softball. Much, much more.
Like telephones, radios, the dark, spinach, horses, thunder, and butterflies. The list was endless. Johnny was a walking neurosis. It’s a wonder he’s survived this long.
But he has.
I ran into him at the post office the other day, along with his two children and Mary, his wife. Nice family. Johnny has a big job at a bank now. He’s happy and content. And, finally and completely, unafraid.
There was no psychotherapy involved in Johnny’s transformation. No pills or prescriptions. To hear Johnny say it, there was just his faith and his family. That was all he needed.
Maybe that’s all everyone needs. Because the truth is that we all harbor our own fears, those shadows that crawl and slink deep inside and get in the way of seeing the beauty of things. I’m not afraid of softball or telephones or spinach, but I am afraid. I’m afraid a lot. And there are times when I want more than anything else the opposite of that fear.
For the longest time, I thought that opposite was courage. Makes sense, doesn’t it? But Johnny’s taught me different.
He’s taught me that the opposite of fear isn’t courage, the opposite of fear is Love.
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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