Billy Coffey

storyteller

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Turn the page (The grocery store, Part II)

image courtesy of photobucket.com

Last week I wrote about my trip to the grocery store, and the Amish woman in the checkout line who offered us all a little wisdom on how to approach everything that’s happening. But there’s a lot more to that story.

Consider this Part II.

To recap, I thought I’d be smart and get to the Food Lion out on Route 340 right when they opened. The problem was half the town had the same bright idea. You should have seen us all
— rednecks and farmers and factory workers, everybody trying to get what we could without getting too close. What struck me as I weaved in and out of the aisles were the many ways everyone approached the experience.

For the produce guy, that Tuesday morning was just another day.  It was business as usual. There’s not a finer human being than the produce guy at our Food Lion.

Always smiling, always talking, always ready to help. “How you doin?” he asked as we crossed paths. I was fine. “Great day, great day,” he said. “Everything’s beautiful.” Business as usual.

There was the woman who came in through the doors as if those were her final steps from a long trip home. Smiling, waving to everyone. Saying, “What y’all doin keepin yourselfs all the way over there?” before cackling at her own joke. Because who says humor has to die during a pandemic?

Workers coming off the graveyard shift at the Hershey plant, just trying to get a few things so they could go home and sleep before doing it all over again. For them, life hasn’t changed much at all.  That’s good in some ways, bad in others.

Farmers roaming the aisles for their wives, confused about where the flour and cooking oil were but not confused about some virus, because whether they get sick or not, the cows still need fed and the corn grown.

The business man in his suit and tie walking up front with a loaf of bread and a bag of coffee tucked under one arm, pausing only to nod at a stock boy who said, “Hope you sell some tractors today, Ed,” and to which he replied, “Hope I do too, because things is thin.”

But it was the man in the cereal aisle I remember most.

The one who looked as if he’d arrived at the Food Lion that morning prepared to enter the mouth of hell itself. Mask and gloves, along with a pair of thick overalls designed not only to repel dirt and mud, but any virus this nasty old world could throw at him. He held box of Cheerios in one hand and a box of Fruity Pebbles in the other. Lifted them up like to judge their quality by their weight. As I walked by, he flashed me a look of pure hate and even purer fear. Someone up front laughed. He turned his head that way. Beneath the cover of his mask, I heard:

“This ain’t no goddamned fairytale here.”

I kept going. None of it was particularly shocking. You hear a lot of cussing in the grocery store, mostly from men who are at the same time confronting their own ignorance along with why in the world the jelly isn’t stocked next to the peanut butter. But it did bother me in a way that only now I can describe. It wasn’t what he said, really, but how he said it. Sure, he was angry, but he was scared most of all. And who among us can blame him for that?

I’ve long lived by the notion that life’s big things are better understood when viewed through the little things.

That idea was proven true once more by that trip to the store. Every one of us can be found in one of the people I shared those fifteen minutes with. Some of us are trying to keep our heads up, trying to focus on the beauty and the good that this world still offers in spite of everything. Others are just trying to get by. Some are taking it one shift at a time. And there are a lot of us who are just plain scared.

It’s true that we’re all in the same boat, but it’s also true that we’re all given a different view of the dark waters around us.

We’re all asking the same things right now. What am I supposed to do? How am I supposed to think? What’s going to happen? Anyone who claims to have an answer is either fooling themselves or hasn’t thought about it enough. Because there is no answer, or at least no answer that we could ever understand.

It’s easy for people like me to say “We just need to keep our heads up, do what we’re supposed to do, support each other, and we’ll all get back to living soon.”

But for millions of people around the world, that advice simply doesn’t apply. They can’t keep their heads up because their burdens are too great. They did what they were supposed to do but still lost loved ones. They’ll say, How can I support other people when I can’t even support myself now? And how can I get back to living when the life I’ll find once this is over will be so different, so much less, than the life I’ve always known?

Try answering that in a supermarket aisle.

But I have thought about it since then. I’ve thought about it a lot. And if I could meet that man again (adhering to the six-feet rule, of course), I’d tell him he was wrong. Because I think a fairytale is exactly what we’re living, or at least something very close to it.

There are those who think life is best thought of as an equation. It’s something that should be approached logically and methodically, and every truth will reveal itself through careful poking and prodding. What is Real constitutes only those things that can be seen, studied, manipulated, or understood; all else is deemed Unreal.

Then there are those who think that every life is less an equation to solve than a narrative being written. We are all in a great story being told by a power infinitely greater than ourselves. And while we know a little about that story’s beginning and a little more about its end, those chapters in between are being written one day and one sentence at a time. It’s a story that tells the truth about us, and what it means to be human., and that truth isn’t timeless like a formula, but timely in the sense that it “comes true,” little by little with every breath we draw.

That’s what I would tell that man in the cereal aisle. That’s what I’ll tell you. Our days aren’t like a formula that needs solving, they’re a tale that needs living.

So don’t put your book down just yet.

Don’t throw up your hands and say you can’t bear another page.

The story’s not done, and the best part is yet to come.

The happy gas theory

image courtesy of photobucket.com
image courtesy of photobucket.com

It’s May, and that means both good and bad things around here. Good in that the school year is almost over for my kids. Bad in that it still quite isn’t. That’s why my son said something about the happy gas last night.

Here’s where he got that:

He was six when he got his tonsils out. It wasn’t the visit to the hospital that worried him. He was okay with the hospital. And it wasn’t even the pain. What worried him the most was the very thing he most looked forward to.

The happy gas.

It’s tough trying to explain a medical procedure to a six-year-old, especially when the ins and outs are pretty vague to his father. I didn’t really know what tonsils and adenoids were, what function they served, or why they were giving him such trouble. But the anesthesia part I knew.

So I told him he got to wear a mask like Batman did and that the air would smell like cotton candy and he’d fall asleep. And while he was asleep the doctors would do their business and make him better.

“You won’t feel a thing,” I told him. “Promise.”

He didn’t believe me.

Experience had taught him otherwise. He’d slept before, and he’d either done things or had things happen that he not only remembered, but felt.

He fell out of the bed twice. Felt that. Bopped his face against the headboard. Felt that, too. He’s also awakened himself by burping, talking, snoring, and coughing. Sometimes all at once.

No way, he thought, no way, would he be able to sleep through someone operating on him.

So I explained that the happy gas wouldn’t just put him asleep, it would put him really asleep, and that the doctor would make sure he stayed that way until everything was finished.

Afterward, once we were home and he was safely on the sofa with his ice cream, I asked him about it.

“I didn’t feel anything,” he said. “I can’t even remember anything.”

And then he said this—“I wish I could have some of that for when I go to school. That way I could just wake up when I got home and I wouldn’t remember any of it.”

Funny, yes. And that definitely pegged him as my son. But he really had a great idea there, at least on the surface. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have some advance warning to the less than perfect things we have to face? And wouldn’t it be great if just before we could put on a Batman mask, breathe some cotton-candy air, and fall asleep through the whole thing?

Yes. It would.

I’ll admit for a while I did my best not to try and poke holes in his Happy Gas Theory. I knew there were some and most likely many. But sometimes we take comfort in those things that aren’t and can never be. That’s what I did while sitting on the sofa with him. I reveled.

But the truth of course was that we had to go through our painful things sometimes. We could slide around some and jump over others, but sooner or later a storm would come that we couldn’t outrun or take cover from, and we were left to stand there in the open under the pour.

Sometimes, that didn’t seem right to me.

It would make more sense to say that if God was there and if God was good, He would take better care of the ones who loved Him. He would make sure our paths were clear. He would prevent the pain and the pour and the doubt. He would take away the fear.

If there was such a thing as everyday happy gas, I thought, then shouldn’t it be God?

Maybe. But maybe that pain and pour and doubt served a purpose that outweighed the need for our happiness. Maybe we needed fear so we could know the value of faith.

Maybe.

I didn’t know for sure, but I thought the odds were good that He’d spared me from a great many troubles in my life without me knowing it. Not happy gas, but maybe something better. And as I looked down and saw my son wince when he tried to swallow, I knew that all the happy gas in the world couldn’t take away all the pain. Some still lingered.

That was true for all of us, I supposed. We were all a collection of bruises and cuts. We all had our tender places.

And I thought that in the end, it was our pain and not our happiness that brought us nearer to heaven.

Helpless, but not powerless

Screen Shot 2014-02-03 at 9.34.42 AMThere are degrees of heartache in life, each plotted on some imagined graph with “stubbed toe” on one end and “paper cut” farther up, up on through “loss” and “failure” and whatever else, but at the very top will be found a jagged black border surrounding bright red letters that read “sick child.”

I know this because I’m at the doctor’s office with two of them. What exactly is wrong with my children is beyond me, which is why we’ve taken the lengths to drive to the other side of town on such a hard winter’s day. The flu, perhaps—one of those strains not covered by this year’s shot. That, or two bad colds. I suggest the likely culprit is remorse for the cold and snow that has cancelled school these past few days. My son nudges me in the shoulder for that little remark. He tries to laugh. It comes out more a phlegmy snort and I think No, not a flu. Bronchitis, maybe. The doctor will know for sure.

My wife is on my opposite shoulder. Beside her is my daughter. She sniffles, and that small act brings a bit of rosy color to an otherwise pale face. Her coat is zipped to her chin, her blue scarf cinched tight, her legs tucked under her, yet she still shivers against the fever. It’s been two day now. My son’s discomfort is largely auditory—sharp sneezes and deep coughs, each punctuated by sudden and sometimes frantic sprints to the bathroom. My daughter’s condition is more silent and worrying. A diabetic since the age of four, maintaining her sugar is a constant walk upon a tightrope easily swayed and poorly moored. Any virus can ravage her. While you and I have a glucose level that holds steady anywhere from 80-110, hers just clocked in at 396.

And so we sit. And so we wait, huddled together in a tiny corner of this doctor’s office.

Our view is of a bleak outside and the bleaker faces that come in from it. It is a sad parade of the weak and the dying, and I think to myself that however stricken these poor souls are, it is at least themselves who are sick and not their children.

Hung in the middle of the far wall is a framed reprint of Sir Luke Fildes’ The Doctor, first painted in 1887. I’ve sat in this cracked vinyl chair and stared at that painting many times over the years through many discomforts, studying the central figure of the Victorian doctor gazing intently at his patient—a little girl lying sick on a makeshift bed of mismatched dining room chairs, two large pillows, and a ragged blanket.

It’s not the doctor I focus upon this time, but the two figures in the background—father and mother watching from a distance, he with a look of anxious worry and she with her head on the table in despair. Both regulated to the shadows, helpless to do anything.

That’s how I feel right now.

Even a bad parent would not want his or her child to suffer, to writhe and wince with cough and fever. Even a bad parent would wish to suffer in that child’s place. And yet life teaches us all that very often the power we believe we possess is a lie, nothing else. Ours is an immense world, and we are such small things. The virus coursing through the two children beside me is mean and debilitating, and so is the defenselessness felt by their parents. We’ve done all we can. It wasn’t good enough.

Yet in the small minutes I’ve sat here, I’ve learned this one important thing—we are often helpless in this life, but we are never powerless. What we cannot mend we can ease, and where we cannot cure we can comfort. I can’t make my son better, but I can offer him a shoulder upon which to lay his head and a joke to make him smile. I can’t chase my daughter’s fever, but I can put my arm around her and kiss the top of her head. I can listen as she tells me of the book she’s reading.

I cannot spare my children from the troubles of this life, but I can love them through those troubles.

Maybe in the end, that’s what matters.

Baring all

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image courtesy of photobucket.com

Today marks the fourth day of my daughter’s junior high career. So far, it’s been a bumpy ride. She’s done everything she’s been taught, keeping that chest out and chin up and upper lip stiff. But I can see the cracks that have formed on that tough exterior. Even the strongest dam will break with enough pressure.

It’s been a long while since I was in the sixth grade. At a certain point, all those years beyond the last ten or so melt into one fuzzy memory of misshapen moments. Tough to tell the truths from the imaginings sometimes. My sixth grade year was like that until this week. Having my daughter endure it has allowed me to remember much, especially how scary it all was.

The news kids and new teachers. The new school. The extra homework. The hormones racing. Waking up in the middle of the night, trying to wipe your mind of the nightmare you just had about not being able to get your locker open or not finding a seat at the lunch table. Go ahead and chuckle. You know what I’m talking about. Chances are you’ve had those very dreams at some point and maybe even still do from time to time. To me, that proves just how important this time is in my daughter’s life, and just how much of it will cling to her in the coming years.

The biggest test of all came yesterday. She had been warned ahead of time—over the summer, in fact—but that didn’t make things easier. Seeing a thing coming from far off might lessen the surprise, but not necessarily the dread.

Not math or science or language arts. It was dressing out for P.E.

The thought horrified her. Standing in front of a chipped wooden bench in that smelly locker room, feeling your toes on the cold concrete. All that silence banging off cinderblocked walls. Taking your shirt off first because that’s bad but not nearly as bad as taking off your pants, only to discover after that your pants are all you have left. Trudging through the next forty minutes of laps and volleyball, knowing you’re going to have to do it all over again when that’s done.

Baring yourself right there, in front of everybody.

I remember that well, and how terrible it felt.

It’s not only a girl thing, either. The boys suffer, too. One teacher even told me the boys react worse. The girls cry. The boys throw up.

I never yarked my lunch, but things did reach the point when I started wearing my gym shorts under my jeans. It was uncomfortable and god-awful hot, but at least there was little chance of anyone seeing something they shouldn’t. Something only my doctor and mother should see, and only in extreme circumstances.

We don’t like baring ourselves. We’d rather be covered and clothed. We need that barrier between us and the world, even if it is just a thin layer of denim and cotton. If we don’t have that, there’s nowhere we can hide.

I tell her she’ll get used to it. I think that’s true, even if I never did. Of all the lessons my daughter will learn this year, I think the one she’s found in gym class is the most important. Not because I particularly want her just fine with prancing around wearing little more than what the good Lord gave her, but because there will come a time when she will have to bare other, even more private things.

Her heart, for one. Her fears. Her weaknesses and worries. Her faults and failings. We go to great lengths to cover those things, too, and with more than jeans and underwear. And sometimes, we hide behind those things better.

My daughter made it through yesterday well enough. It wasn’t bad, she said. No one looked at her because they were too busy staring at themselves. I think that’s true for a lot of things.

She still doesn’t see this as a learning experience, mostly because she’s stuck in the middle of it right now. That’s another lesson my daughter will learn soon. Unlike junior high, the tests we get in life often come first. The answers come later.

The weight of worry

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image courtesy of photobucket.com

To say my daughter is a worrier would be an understatement. She worries about everything. There are the normal worries of a nine-year-old—Do people like me? Am I going to get an A on my math test? How do I fit in and stand out at the same time? But there are also worries no nine-year-old should concern herself with—What if I don’t become a doctor? What if the whole world blows up? What if God isn’t real?

This has all been going on for a while, and many times I fear it’s getting worse. The world expands when you turn nine. You’re right on the cusp of young adulthood. Things get scary. I understand that. Which is why I’ve gone to great lengths to calm my daughter’s fears and ease her worries.

But lately I’ve noticed a shift in the way I act towards her. I’ll see my daughter coming into the room and know by the way she walks—small steps, head down—and the way she whispers “Daddy?” that something’s on her mind. Something pressing and important.

I’ll say, “Yes?”

And she’ll relay that day’s fresh worry. Whether small or large, warranted or not, doesn’t matter. There is no distinction between important or not. All worries feel the same.

And yet while before I would patiently listen, now I find myself cutting her words short. And while before I would give her the best advice I could, lately I find myself giving her subtle variations of, “You worry too much, and you need to stop.”

It hasn’t worked. My daughter has now gone from worrying about the whole world blowing up to worrying about worrying.

It’s frustrating. For her and for me. This is perhaps the first time I’ve realized that the parental reach extends only so far. At some point, one’s children must act on their own. Nothing I can do can assuage my daughter’s worry. She must do that on her own. And that she can’t—or rather won’t—makes me angry.

It makes me angry because I know what harm constant worry can do. I’ve done it all my life. Like her, they started both small and normal. Also like her, they soon magnified themselves into large, dark shadows of very small and light things. They became like boulders I carried on my insides and refused to put down, dragging me along to the point where steps seemed as miles and the horizon ahead never moved nearer. I was stuck, imprisoned not by life or the devil, but by my own self.

That’s what I fear for her.

That’s why I’m angry.

I see in my daughter my younger self. I want her to be more than her father, and I’m mad that she doesn’t see that she can.

It hasn’t taken me long to realize what an ass I’m being, though. Here I am a grown man, and I still worry about things I shouldn’t. Why should I be angry with my daughter for doing the same? Better, I think, to show her the love and understanding I’ve always refused to show myself.

I can’t be angry that I cannot make her what I wish her to be, because I can’t make myself what I wish to be.

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