Billy Coffey

storyteller

The Rules

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A neighbor down the street has been busy for the last month or so easing his son into what is perhaps the biggest step toward adulthood that a young person can take—getting a driver’s license.

It’s been rough going, the father told me. And maybe a little disappointing, too. Because where his son has been the epitome of intelligence, responsibility, and maturity before, he is now managed to transform himself into a negligent, childish idiot. His words, not mine. Though I do understand what he’s feeling. My father was like that when he taught me how to drive.

The driver’s license is an amazing thing. We don’t have many rites of passage in our culture. There are few elaborate ceremonies to mark the going out of Child and the coming in of Adult. That laminated piece of paper with our picture and vital statistics is as close as we get.

I’ve seen the two of them in the evenings, driving up and down the road with varying degrees of success. The boy always has a look of sheer joy plastered on his face. The father looks as though he is sharing a ride with the Angel of Death. It’s quite comical, really. Until I pause to think that in ten years or so, I’ll be doing the same thing.

The behind-the-wheel part of his son’s education is being supplemented by a little classroom work, too. His father has come up with what he calls the Rules Of The Road. Principles that, if heeded, will keep his son both out of trouble and the hospital.

The Rules are taped to the steering wheel of the battered Ford truck that will soon become his son’s primary mode of transportation. They are also hanging from the refrigerator in the kitchen. And tacked onto the wall beside his bed. There are also pop quizzes.

I gave my own pop quiz to the boy yesterday. Tell me the five rules, I said. He rattled them off like a soldier relaying his orders:

“Be safe because there’s a lot of danger. Keep it slow because there’s always a speed limit. Pay attention because you could wreck and end up in the woods. Check your mirrors because you should always be mindful. Watch for signs because if you don’t obey, you’ll end up in front of the judge. Don’t be impaired because you should always drive at your best. And enjoy the ride,” he said.

This is serious stuff. And I think it’s working.

This boy may not be able to parallel park and will likely never be able to find third gear, but he will follow The Rules. A plus for him, I think. Because following them won’t just make him successful on the road. It’ll make him successful in life, too.

Take rule number one, for instance. Be safe. There is a lot of danger in life. Some of it sits and waits for us to stumble upon it, and some of it is out there trying to find us.

Or keeping it slow, rule number two. We’re always in a hurry, aren’t we? Always trying to get somewhere to do something so we can go to another somewhere to do something else. Better to slow down. We miss too much by rushing along.

What about paying attention? Good advice for the drivers around here, since there are a lot of country roads with potholes and ditches. Don’t watch where you’re going, and you’ll find yourself in the woods. Keep your mind on things that don’t really matter in life, and you’ll likely find yourself in the woods, too.

Checking your mirrors is also important. Since we tend to associate with those whom we share common traits and values, the friends we have and the company we keep are mirrors for ourselves. So, too, are our children. They come into this world as a blank slate, and for the first years parents are the ones who hold the chalk. What they become is often our own self-portrait, just miniaturized.

And as there are plenty of signs on the road—Stop, Yield, Merge—that if disobeyed will and you in front of a judge. But there are plenty in life, too. Warning us, helping us, keeping us safe. Heed them and all will be well. A good thing to keep in mind, since we’ll all have to stand in front of the Judge one day.

Driving while impaired is never a good idea. When driving, that means no alcohol or drugs. When living, that means no hate and fear. Because those things impair us, too.

And then there was rule number seven: enjoy the ride. Put there by his father because he wanted to end things on a high note, and put here by me for the same reason. Because following The Rules isn’t designed to make things less fun, but to make us more happy.

Enjoying the ride is the boy’s favorite rule, by the way.

Mine, too.

Nightandloveyou

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A recent, and very early, Friday morning:

I hear it through a thick blanket of sleep, soft at first then clearer and stronger. Not the sort of noise one fears at night. Not a crack or a thump or a ring from the telephone. But the sort of noise that makes you wonder where it’s coming from and what in the world it means.

“Free credit report dot com, tell your friends tell your dad tell your mom.”

I grab the remote control and point it in the general direction of the television, thinking that I had dozed off in the middle of whatever I had been watching three hours earlier. I wave it blindly, pushing the ON/OFF button and then smacking the whole thing against my hand because the batteries must be dead. And then I realize that the television isn’t on. The noise, however, still is:

“Free credit report dot com, tell your friends tell your dad tell your mom.”

My head raises, using what can only be described as the human equivalent to sonar to identify the source.

It’s coming from my son’s bedroom.

I pull back the blankets, schlep into the hallway, and stand at his door. The soft red light from his Lightning McQueen lamp illuminates him in his bed. He is staring at the ceiling with his arms raised and his fingers doing some sort of magical dance.

“Hey,” I say.

He jerks and spins and stares at me with a look of terror. He has been worried of monsters under his bed lately, and ghosts in his closet, and the bad guy from Toy Story. I just may be all three.

“Just me,” I promise.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Why aren’t you sleeping?”

“I am.”

“No, you’re singing.”

“Sorry, Daddy.”

“Let’s get some sleep, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy. Nightandloveyou.”

“Nightandloveyoutoo.”

Back through the hallway, back into bed. I pull the blankets over me and roll to my side. Then, just as I close my eyes:

“Free credit report dot com, tell your friends tell your dad tell your mom.”

Sigh.

Back out of bed, back into the hallway, back to his door.

“Hey, bud,” I say.

“Hi, Daddy.”

“Quit singing and go to sleep.”

“Okay, Daddy. Nightandloveyou.”

I turn to leave, satisfied that my tone of voice has said what my words did not: don’t wake me again.

“Daddy?” he says, more to the shadow I cast against the wall than to me.

“Yeah, bud?”

“Mommy says to sing when you’re scared.”

Uh-oh.

I move into his room and onto his bed. “Mommy’s a smart girl,” I say. “Maybe the smartest.”

“She says singing makes the shadows brighter.”

“It does,” I tell him. But I don’t think she meant to sing a song from a commercial, and I’m fairly sure she didn’t mean to sing in the middle of the night.”

“Do you get scared, Daddy?”

I mull that one over, biding a few precious seconds by rearranging his covers and pillow. This is a murky question, one best considered in the light of day when I’m alert rather than the dark of night when I’m-not-so-much.

I weigh my options. Tell him that I am scared sometimes, and that may make things much worse. Because if Daddy’s scared, then there must really be some bad things out there. Things worse than monsters. Don’t tell him, though, and I risk much worse. I risk lying to my son.

Because I do get scared. A lot.

“Yeah,” I tell him. “Sometimes.”

“What do you do when you’re scared?”

“Pray, usually.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s even better than singing.”“Does it make the shadows brighter?”

“Better,” I say. “It makes the shadows go away.”

So we pray that the angels will chase away all the monsters. He speaks of the ones in his room, and I think of the ones in this world. Because I know the truth: the ones in the world are real.

We sit alone in the quiet stillness of his room, two people determined to find peace and rest regardless of the shadows that surround us. “It’s not so dark with a father here,” he observes. With me there beside him, rest comes easier. “Nightandloveyou,” he says, and then is asleep.

Back in my own bed, I stop to consider the shadows in our world. I am aware of many more than my son, and thankfully so. I worry about my family sometimes. I worry what will happen next. Tomorrow used to be a word of hope for people. Things would be better then. But I think that too many would rather cling to the present or even the past now. For a lot of us, tomorrow’s just too scary.

Then I remember what my son said. The darkness doesn’t seem to dark when your father is there. Yes. The shadows lessen. Rest comes easier.
I close my eyes and say my own short prayer.

“Nightandloveyou,” I say to my Father, and then am asleep.

The Fruit Salad

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There were prunes in the fruit salad.

I peered down into the large bowl of Jell-O and fruit, unsure of what to do. I’d never been faced with this sort of situation before.

At six, I felt I was though I was well on my way to adulthood. I could tie my shoes, count to ten, and say most of my ABCs. I no longer slept with the night light on, and I no longer harbored any fanciful misgivings of monsters in my closet.

But more than that, more than all of that, I had been recently indoctrinated into a language used by adults only, the sort of words that were only bandied about far from innocent ears.

I’d learned to cuss. And very well, I might add.

I knew them all courtesy of my next door neighbor, a ten-year-old boy who as far as I can imagine is now either incarcerated or worse. But he was cool back then, cooler than anyone I knew, and I wanted to be just like him. Told him so, too. Cussing was part of my education, and it was powerful stuff.

I kept my secret knowledge safely tucked in the back of my brain until one of the words escaped my lips in the worst place possible: my grandparents’ house. There are a lot of things you don’t do when you’re in the company of your grandmother, and there are a lot more you don’t do when your grandmother happens to also be Amish. Cussing, I found, ranked just above killing kittens and just below denying the reality of an Almighty God.

The exact situation escapes me, though I remember it was an argument in which she told me to do something, I said I didn’t want to, she said she would tell my mother, and I said, to quote, “I don’t give a $@!#.”

To make matters worse, the word I had chosen to employ was the mother of all curse words, the one my next door neighbor had dubbed “the Big One.” Guaranteed to provoke a reaction.

And there was a reaction.

Grandma stood dumbstruck for three full seconds, upon which she bent down, grabbed my ear, and drug me across the kitchen floor and into the corner, where I remained for most of the day.

I dared not turn around, either. Not when the pots and pans were crashing, not when she began pleading for my eternal soul. Only when lunch was ready hours later did she tell me to sit.

“Enjoy your food,” she said, and nothing more.

Jell-O salad. Yes! My favorite. As smooth as glass on the top and bottom, with fruit defying gravity in the middle, suspended in an ocean of transparent red. Maybe she wasn’t so mad after all. Maybe she would let bygones be bygones and we could put the whole thing behind us.

But no.

Because there amidst the bananas and pears and pineapples, there were prunes. And everyone knew I hated prunes.

“Grandma?” I said.

“Yes?”
“Why did you put prunes in there?”

“Oh my,” she said, feigning shock. “You don’t like prunes?”

“I don’t like prunes, Granmda.”

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “I’ll tell you what. You can still eat it. Just take the prunes out.”

“It won’t do any good,” I answered, sniffing the bowl. “The whole bowl smells like prunes. Even if I took them all out, it would still stink.”

“Hmm. “You’re right. What a shame. I know how you like your Jell-O salad.”

We sat there, silent. Then she said, “Where did you learn that word?”

“From a friend.”

“Friends don’t teach you things like that,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you know what you said was wrong?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Do you know why?”

“No,” I said. “It’s just a word. What can be so bad about just a word?”

She tapped the bowl in front of us. “Because you’re like this Jell-O salad.”

“How?”

“Whatever goes into your heart goes in there and settles. It stays. You can take good things into your heart, like the bananas and pears and pineapples. Or you can take bad things into it, like the prunes. The problem is, the good can’t make the bad better, but the bad can spoil the good. You can scoop out all the prunes, but the rest would still be messy.”

“And it would smell bad, too,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Don’t forget it,” she said.

I did though, for a while. I said and did plenty of things I had no business in saying and doing. But I know better now. Grandma was right. Once you let something into your heart, it’s there for good. Whether that thing is destined to be a joyful remembrance or an unbearable regret, we commit our very souls to the choices we make every day. And there they will remain, for good or ill, as a record of the worthiness of our lives.

A Good Day…

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The tuck-in is a crucial part of every parent’s nightly routine, a delicate process by which clingy and energetic children must be persuaded that the absolute best thing in the world to do is go to sleep by themselves. If you get it just right, a night’s peace just may be in order. Screw up even the tiniest detail, however, and you can forget sleep. For the both of you.

The rituals differ for my two children in detail, though the overall process is pretty much the same: prayers, story, small talk, covers, kiss, goodnight. Not much to it on the surface maybe, but still harder than it looks. Repetition is key.

My son likes to recount his day just before bed. It’s as if he needs some sort of confirmation that everything he did and said and thought was worthy of my attention and comment (which is, by the way). A few nights ago, the normal exploits of eating breakfast, exploring his grandparents’ yard, going to preschool, and taking a nap seemed particularly stimulating, told to me with much body language and laughter.

“Sounds like you had a good day then,” I told him.

“I did?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. Then, “Didn’t you?”

“I don’t know.” He wrinkled his forehead and thought about it. “Maybe. I’m not sure. What makes a good day?”

I opened my mouth to answer, but only a breath came out. What makes a good day? What kind of a question was that?

“I’ll have to get back with you on that one, Buddy,” I finally said.

“Okay, Daddy. Night and love you.”

“Night and love you, too,” I said.

Though my son’s night was flawless and complete, mine wasn’t. I couldn’t get his question out of my head because it seemed the perfect sort of question to ponder upon for a while—simple, broad, and meaningful.

What’s a good day? As much as I thought about it, I couldn’t come up with an answer. Which was a little troubling. I prayed every morning for God to give me a good day, I’d tell my family after work that I had a good day, and I’d thank God every night for giving me a good day.

But I was beginning to realize that I didn’t really know what I was praying for, what sort of answer I was giving to my family, and what exactly I was thanking God for giving me.

Strange, huh?

So I thought I’d conduct a little experiment. I’d take the next couple of days and write down everything that happened. Then, at the end of the night, I’d take a look at my list, ask myself if it was a good day or not, and try to figure out why.

Day one was a Sunday. My list: Church, lunch (cheeseburgers!), a visit to my parents, a walk around the neighborhood, coloring with the kids, ballgame, bed. Not bad.

But good? Surprisingly, no. My day, I found, wasn’t really good or bad. Just…okay.

Then, day two. Monday. My list: get up at oh-dark-thirty, go to work, find a missing package for a student, listen to someone talk about her mother’s failing health, rush across town on an important errand for someone else, come home, collapse on the couch, hold my daughter because she’s sick, tuck the kids in, go to bed.

It sounded like a long, hard, stressful day. And maybe it was. But it was also a good day no matter how it sounded, and I didn’t know why.

How could a busy Monday be better than a lazy Sunday?

But maybe not. Sunday was a Me day, really. I did what I wanted and when. Monday? Monday seemed more about helping people, whether that help be as big as driving across town for someone else or as small as listening to a troubled friend. Maybe that was all the difference.

What makes a good day? I know the answer now. And when my son gets up in the morning, I’ll tell him.

Because what makes a good day isn’t what happens to you, but because of you.

p.s.- I’ve had the pleasure of having more than a few good days lately, though the reasons perhaps had little to do with me. I’ve received a lot of emails about the missing comments, and all were humbly appreciated.

One in particular came from a reader who confessed to being on the fence when it comes to God. My blog, she said, has helped to strengthen her fragile faith. Not necessarily my posts, though. It was the comments that you all so kindly contribute. I never paused to consider the fact that people enjoyed the comments just as much as the content, and in many cases even more so. After reading that, I felt pretty selfish. Yet another reminder that it ain’t all about me.

So to her and to you all: please, comment away…