Difficult losses
January 31, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 20 Comments
image courtesy of gamescrafters.berkeley.edu
We Coffeys are a competitive bunch. Life most character traits, that particular one has both its plusses and minuses. But by and large, our competitiveness has served us well. We are not content to be merely good at something. We have to be the best. And of course, in order to be the best, you first have to beat the best.
Which I suppose is why my son kept challenging me to games of Connect Four. You know the game, right? Big yellow rectangle on a pair of blue plastic stilts. One person has black checkers, the other red, and the winner is the first to get four of his or her colors in a row. Santa brought it for Christmas. Mostly because I played it all the time when I was a kid.
My son took to the game just as I did in my once-upon-a-time. We played a game under the tree on Christmas night, then again the night after, and then every night since. Until tonight, anyway. But I’ll get to that.
The thing about playing games with your kids is that you wonder when and if you should let them win. I’ve let my kids beat me at wrestling and boxing and Scrabble and chess. Not often, mind you, but often enough. It’s important they learn graciousness. Both when they win and when they lose. But I never let my son beat me at Connect Four. Some things needs to be a challenge. And to be honest, I like my kids to think I’m a genius at something for now. I know it won’t always be like that.
So we played. He tried, I toyed. He lost, I won.
Until last night.
My son beat me. Snuck in a backdoor diagonal of four red checkers. I never saw it. And what’s worse—what’s maybe worst of all—is that by that point I really was trying to beat him. He had homework to do, and so did I. I’d used my last move to set up my third black piece in a row, hidden from his sight on the opposite side of the board. It was a brilliant move. His was more so.
He dropped in his fourth checker and bulged his eyes.
I bulged mine.
“I win!” he shouted. Then he jumped up and crawled around to my side of the board just to make sure. “I win!”
There had to be some mistake. He’d miscounted. There were three checkers, not four. Or four, but not in a row. Something. Anything.
But. No.
“You win,” I whispered.
He danced. He screamed. He told his mother and sister. He even took a picture of it.
I was happy for him. And not. Like I said, I’m competitive. I don’t like to lose, especially when I’m trying to win and ESPECIALLY when I’m trying to impress my son with my staggering strategic intellect. That’s bad, I guess. But honest. At least I was a gracious loser. I allowed him his celebration. All three hours of it.
He was still awake when I went to bed, though barely. The excitement had worn off by then, leaving behind a sheen of quiet reflection on his face. I tucked his blankets and kissed him on the forehead, then headed for the hallway.
“Dad?” he asked.
“Yeah, bud?”
“I’m sorry I beat you.”
I smiled and told him not to be, that he’d won fair and square and should be proud because I was proud. The next morning, he said he hadn’t slept well. Neither did I.
I waited tonight for him to suggest another game. He didn’t. The box still sits untouched in the basket behind the recliner. I supposed it will be untouched for a while.
I suppose every child must inevitably arrive at that moment when he realizes his father is not the perfect man he’s always believed. That he in fact makes mistakes and misses things. That he loses. That he is a fallible, fallen person. It is a difficult moment, but a necessary one.
Both for the parent and the child.
Living at the hospital bed
January 27, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 19 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
The VFW was there, seven dignified old men in their uniforms and white gloves. They carried old rifles that cracked blank cartridges at just the right moment. It was a final salute to a hard man.
Sitting in the front row were the last of Saylor’s family—twins Brett and Harper, and their wives and children. To see them was to gain a glimpse into their thoughts.
For Harper, the shine of the day’s sun was not enough to lift the darkness that surrounded him. He spent the service slumped forward in his chair and refused to look at the casket that held his father’s bones. He did not gaze skyward, he merely kept his eyes on the cold ground at his feet. When the shots rang out, he recoiled. Most would say his reaction was understandable. Saylor’s yelling was often likened to the sound of a gun going off.
For his part, Harper’s twin brother was the opposite. Brett Lambert sat with a posture that was both straight and sure, his eyes halfway between the casket where the shell of his father lay and the sky the soul of his father now resided. Brett nodded as the preacher spoke of his father’s life and even laughed when everyone was reminded of how difficult old Saylor could be. He smiled when the shots rang out.
Two brothers who had lost their father. Both would say they were raised in a way that wouldn’t be described as harsh. They always had food to eat and clothes to wear. But theirs was an unloving household of impossible expectations and painful consequences when those expectations went unmet. It was their mother who held the family together. When she passed, Saylor became distant. More demanding, more angry. He never hit his boys, but that didn’t matter. Language can do as much harm as fists. Maybe more.
Both Brett and Harper would count among their greatest days their high school graduation. Not simply because new life that awaited them, but because it meant they could leave the house and never return.
That’s exactly what they did.
When word came Saylor was dying, neither knew exactly what to do. Brett leaned toward going to his father’s side, but Harper was adamant. He would not go. He couldn’t. To him, hurts could pile up such that it blocked whatever light there was to shine. Harper had a good life. He preferred to look toward the future rather than dredging up the past.
Brett went. Harper stayed. That was why those two twins could not look more different that day.
Brett would be the first to tell you it was a difficult reunion. So much hurt and resentment. So many wounds that had never healed. But there at the hospital bed, Brett found the love he believed his father had taken.
Saylor found what many do. Death has a way of clarifying things. It stalks us and finds us and places before us a mirror through which we see our truest reflection. It displays the contours of our lives, every gulley and hill, not so we may regret, but so we may smooth them while there’s time.
That’s what Saylor and Brett did for two days. They smoothed. They hugged and laughed and cried. They said they were sorry. They said I love you.
And then Saylor was gone.
I think of that story often. I haven’t seen Brett or Harper since that funeral, but I hear they’re well. Happy. The only difference they show is their reaction every time their father’s name is mentioned.
Me, I suppose I can’t blame Harper for not seeing his father one last time. I can’t imagine having a father like that, but I know well what it’s like to have a mountain of hurts block out whatever light is there to shine.
I’ve found, though, that living life at the hospital bed chips away at that mountain. I try not to let the things that need to be said go unsaid. I’m quick with I’m sorry, quicker with I love you. I hug and laugh and cry. I try to smooth over those gullies and hills.
Because there is plenty of time for many things, but not for those.
Humanimals
January 25, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 15 Comments
image courtesy of AFP/Getty Images
What you see to the right has become one of the more famous pictures taken in the aftermath of the recent landslides in Brazil. The dog’s name is Leao. She’s sitting by the grave of her owner, Cristina Maria Cesario Santana, who was among the 655 people killed.
Leao sat by the grave for two days and refused to move. From what I understand, she’s been adopted by another family since. It’s a heart-wrenching picture, no doubt. Especially to people like me who love dogs.
When I saw the picture and read the story a few days ago, I thought it would be nice to write a piece about the extraordinary bond between people and their pets. I had it all written in my head, complete with title and ending. It was going to be a good one, that piece.
But as I am given to do after reading a story online, I read through the comments. Strange as it might sound, I was even more sad after I read those than after I’d read the story of the dog and her departed owner.
A taste:
Now only if people would be as Loyal as that dog! Makes me believe that the Animal is more human than most Humans.
If things would have stayed there, I could have perhaps kept to my original idea. But they didn’t stay there. It got worse:
They are more human than us.
Animals are BETTER than humans!
Human beings…worst. species. ever.
Should you expect anything more? After all, we’re all animals, too. Humanimals.
By the time I was done reading through all of that, I’d decided that maybe I should write about something else.
I’m not so world-weary as to suggest the sort of thinking evident in those comments is representative of the majority of people. I am, however, world-weary enough to say it’s representative of a lot of us. To many, human beings are the worst thing to ever happen to our fair planet. We’re monsters. Earth’s nightmare. We destroy through violence and apathy and greed. Everything here would be better if we were not.
All you have to do for proof is turn on the news. Spread out in all its high-definition glory are people dying and polar ice caps melting and oil spewing into once pristine seas. Birds are falling out of the sky. Fish are washing ashore. A river in Canada even recently turned a strange electric lime color.
We’re killing everything. According to some, that’s what we do best.
I wonder about this. I wonder what’s happened. There was a time in the not-too-distant past when the worst thing a person could be called was a dog. Nowadays, dogs are considered much more humane.
I’m not going to get into a evolution vs. creationism thing here, because that’s not me. But I will say a lot of things changed after Mr. Darwin came up with his theory. Somewhere along the line, humanity began to lose its nobility. Suddenly we weren’t so special anymore. And worse, all the horrible things we did could now be more easily explained.
Because we weren’t just human, we were animals, too.
Humanimals.
There are a lot of examples in these times of just how bad we can be, and there’s no doubt that our ambitions and self-interests often race ahead of our hearts and consciences. But I will never believe we are mere animals.
I will never put stock in the notion that we are not set apart and above. That we all do not carry within us a spark of the Divine and a purpose to become more than we are.
“What is man that You take thought of him, and the son of man that You care for him?” the Psalmist asked. “Yet you have made him a little lower than God, and You crown him with glory and majesty.”
Glory and majesty. Yes.
That is why we create. Why we love. Why we aspire to do the right thing. That is why for every one person who pulls out a gun and shoots into a crowd, there will be four who rise up to stop him.
Why we struggle for things like peace and justice.
Why we love when there seems to be no point in the loving.
Because we are blessed. Fearfully and wonderfully made.
And because the depths to which we can sink pale to the heights to which we can ascend.
Playing dead
January 19, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 2 Comments
Image by Tim Miller, used with permission via Flickr.
My kids have been dead for the last three minutes, and off and on for the last ten. I just checked them to be sure. They were where I’d last seen them—splayed out on the living room floor and framed by rays of sunshine that poured through the windows. I stepped over them. They didn’t move. Even put a foot in front of their noses. Nothing.
They’re good at this.
By the way the living room has been demolished, it must have been an epic battle. Lightsabers and laser pistols litter the floor. The overturned ottoman seems to have been where the last stand was made. My son is there, pistol still in hand. My daughter is near the door. She’s doing her best to be lifeless, but I can see her lungs heaving.
“Who won?” I ask them.
“We both did,” my daughter says, and I am not surprised. At eight and six, they believe there are never any losers during playtime. The winning comes in the playing itself.
“I died good, Daddy,” my son says below me. He keeps one eye closed to stay in character and opens the other to make sure I heard him.
“What’s it mean to die good?” I ask him.
“I was a hero,” he says.
“Me, too,” says my daughter. “We both were.”
I’m guest posting for my friends at High Calling today. To read the rest of the story, click here.
Selling memories
January 17, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 21 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
It’s funny how old memories can sink with the weight of new ones only to bubble up again. Tiny moments you thought had been long blown away by life’s continual wind circle back and stick to you like a burr. You find that memory is suddenly everywhere.
That’s what’s happening to me right now. One little memory.
I don’t know why it bubbled up again, don’t know why it’s sticking. I think God often makes us remember things in the past that could serve as the basis for some sort of wisdom now, but I can’t imagine how that’s the case with me. And it’s a painful memory, one I’d like to see sink back down in my mind for as long as possible. I figure writing about it may help. Or, perhaps, it may help you. In either case, it will serve its purpose.
I was ten years old, an age that is largely spent balancing on that thin line between knowing much about the world and not wanting to know. It was summer. I remember it was hot. I remember the crowd, too, and thinking it was more people than I’d ever seen in my life.
They were all gathered around two farm wagons that had been towed into my grandparents’ backyard and placed side by side. They sat in the open space between the garden my grandmother and I once worked and the giant willow tree I spent hours swinging from. There was a small patch of spearmint that grew at the base of the tree. Grandma would pick a few leaves and make tea with them just for me. I remember the people clamoring around the tree that day, trampling the patch.
I think that’s when I began to realize everything was ending.
The white Cape Cod my grandmother and grandfather had lived in for nearly thirty years was showing wear. The siding had been dulled to an almost gray by the sun. The shingles on the roof were brittle and stained by rain and wind. The house looked tired. I remember that, too. Everything looked tired.
The people who stood on top of the two giant wagons looked just as weary. My mother was one of them. Also an aunt and two uncles. They would each hold up what was in their hands as the man with the microphone yelled to the crowd in a language that was both foreign and fast. My mother held up a painting of a cabin that hung in my grandparents’ living room. I remember I would often sit on the sofa and stare at that painting while Grandma and I drank our spearmint tea. I would tell her that one day I wanted to live in a place like that. I still do.
The man with the microphone yelled more, numbers I knew mixed with words I didn’t. My mother kept her hands raised. One by one, others in the crowd raised theirs. I wondered why she looked so sad with all those people waving at her.
She put the painting down just after the man with the microphone said the one word I did understand:
“SOLD!”
I remember my father standing beside me. I asked him, “What’s going on?”
He didn’t tell. Instead he put his hand on my shoulder and led me over to the apple tree. He picked one from a high bough, rubbed it on the leg of his jeans, and offered it. I still remember how that apple tasted.
As I said, I was ten. Balancing on that thin line. But on that day the line was thinner than I cared it to be. I was old enough to know my grandfather had died and my grandmother before him, young enough to still believe I would still come and work the garden and drink the tea and stare at the painting of the cabin. I wobbled on the thin line that day between the memories I could keep and the memories being sold.
I suppose I wobble still.
A final Monday
January 10, 2011 by Billy Coffey · 2 Comments
It’s still pretty close to the beginning of the year, that magical time when we can tweak bits and pieces of our lives and have a pretty good feeling they’ll stick. Those tweaks can be personal or professional or both or neither. That part really doesn’t matter. What matters is that one feels a need to adjust something in order to make something else better.
I’m going to be doing a little tweaking of my own beginning this week, and I’m talking about it over at katdish’s site today. Stop on over there and read. And have a great Monday!
Choosing a happy new year
December 30, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 13 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Of all the holiday cartoons that have appeared on our television screen over the past month, I have to say the worst was Rudolph’s Shiny New Year. Ben Franklin? A troll? A baby new year with huge ears? Hmm.
I never liked that one, even as a child. The whole thing seemed confusing and random and even a little scary. It’s not just me, either. My kids stopped watching halfway through and decided that playing in the snow sounded much more fun.
Now that I think about it, though, maybe all that scariness was intended. Maybe Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass wanted a cartoon about New Year’s to be random and confusing. Because that’s what they often are.
There are many people who will go out tonight to say goodbye to 2010 and hello to 2011 in style. They’ll drink and carouse and laugh and kiss. To many, it’s a starting over and a chance to set things right. I’ll do better this year, they say. This year, things will be different.
For others, all that partying is designed to postpone the inevitable. I have a friend who goes out every New Years Eve and gets absolutely plastered. Saying hello to 2011 is the furthest thing from in his mind. To him, the thought of 365 days clouded in uncertainty scares him to the point where he can only face it in an alcoholic fog.
Sad, yes. But I understand.
Perhaps it’s this day more than any other that reminds us of the steady pace of time. It grinds on, and we can either walk alongside it or be dragged behind.
We can see our days as blessings or punishments. We can see the clean slate before us as a desert that will consume us, or we can see it as fertile ground to plant an abundant crop.
This New Year’s Eve, I wish for you the same that I wish for my friend, and it is this:
Eyes to see the latter rather than the former.
Just a little off
December 28, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 17 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
My coffee wasn’t right this morning, and I don’t know why. It had been brewed just as it usually is, with the usual amount of scoops and water. I used the usual amount of cream and sugar. It was even in my usual cup. But it didn’t taste right. It was still good, but not great. Something was a little…off.
That would seem a small thing to most people, but not me. I need my coffee in the morning, and when it’s a little off, it affects other things. It’s like the first domino that trips and causes the others to fall, and that’s exactly what happened to me today. My coffee was just a little off, which made everything else seem the same way.
Like the weather. Today had that crisp quality that November in Virginia always seems to promise—the air was cool, the skies blue, and I could look eastward to the Blue Ridge and westward to the Alleghenies of West Virginia. But there was a breeze. November brings a wind to this valley that cuts through every layer of clothing you wear and into your bones. That’s the sort of wind that blew today, and hard enough to keep me from enjoying the scenery outside. It was good weather, yes. But just a little off.
Lunch wasn’t that good—filling, but not very palatable. The ride home from work was quiet, but it was marred by the road repairs I had to navigate through and the traffic that surrounded me. The nightly routine was just that—routine. Nothing horrible happened, but neither did anything wonderful. It was good, but just a little off.
Now, as I lay here in bed and recall the events of the day, I can honestly say that I can summon not one thing, not even one moment, that has been truly satisfying about my day. Everything fell just a bit short of the mark. In fact, the past nineteen hours or so have been just the opposite of today’s lunch—on this day, my life has been palatable, but not filling.
It would be easy for me to blame the coffee for all of this. After all, that’s where my existential angst had its beginning. And if I could stretch that notion out a bit, I could almost rationalize a decision to concentrate all of my efforts tomorrow morning to make the best cup of coffee I can. Maybe then my day will be filled with all manner of sublime satisfactions.
I really don’t think that’s true, though.
I think if it wouldn’t have been the coffee, it would have been something else. Our days are full of those minor irritations that tempt us toward dissatisfaction. In a world of incalculable joys, there still doesn’t seem to be enough of them to grant us the peace we all crave.
I think deep down we all know this. But there’s such an air of pessimism in the thought that we’re all doomed in this life to forever seek and never really find. It’s much easier and much more hopeful to convince ourselves otherwise. If we do a little less of this or get a little more of that, the elusive satisfaction we’ve always sought will finally be ours.
We humans have been thinking that for a while, haven’t we? And chances are we’ll be thinking that for a while more. That longing is part of who we are. It’s what makes us a little lower than the angels, and what often gets us into so much trouble.
I’ll try to remember that next time. I won’t expect true fulfillment from something as silly as a cup of coffee or the weather or a meal or even the incalculable joys of this world, because they can’t give that to me. Everything will always seem just a little off for us in this life, and that’s because we were made for the next one.
Hearing the bell
December 27, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 3 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
Well, it’s over.
The presents have been opened, the excitement has waned, and all that is left of this Christmas seems to be a longing for the next one. At least, that’s what my kids are thinking. And honestly, that’s what I’ve caught myself thinking, too.
Life will resume in a few days. School will start. It’ll be back to work. Everything will be boxed up and put back into the attic. It’s easy for people like me to grab hold of Christmas. Hard for me to let it go.
But then I found my last Christmas present, and that all changed.
I’ve written about it over at katdish’s site. Please hop on over there and visit. And don’t let that Christmas magic slip away quite yet.
Merry Christmas
December 23, 2010 by Billy Coffey · 17 Comments
image courtesy of photobucket.com
For a lot of people, Christmas Day is their favorite day of the year. It isn’t mine. I’ve always fancied Christmas Eve a bit more. I’ve often wondered why and never really have figured out an answer, but I think I have one now.
It’s the anticipation.
It’s the knowing that what we’ve all been waiting for is now upon it. It’s almost here, mere hours away. No longer a wish, but a certainty.
In a life that promises doubt, certainties are treasures.
Today I will go about my normal Christmas Eve routine. There will be emails to send and a book to write. I’ve promised to help with cookies. And I’ll likely ready the truck for our annual drive to look at Christmas lights this evening.
And there are church services tonight, too. Can’t forget that. Because like Linus said, that’s what Christmas is all about. The birth of a baby boy who was God as much as man and heaven as much as earth. Who grew like we do and died so we’ll never have to really.
I’ll think of that today, too. Of the gift He gave. Of that great present still waiting for my unwrapping. Of the promise that one day I’ll be with the angels and those who have gone before me. And Him. Oh, the questions I will have for Him. I’ll likely think of those today, too. And I’ll also have in my mind a vision of my laughter when He answers them, and of me saying, “Of course, of course…”
It’s the anticipation, you see.
From my family to yours, I wish you a Merry Christmas. I wish you God’s abundant blessings and His eternal peace. May this Christmas be a seed that is planted in you, that sprouts and yields fruit to see you through the winters of your heart.
God bless us, every one.
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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