conflict

Longing for Just Us

June 6, 2020 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

We’ve just about had it all this year, haven’t we?

A pandemic; a recession; fires; earthquakes; murder hornets; murders of innocent men caught on camera; riots. Jobs have been lost. Families have been broken. Dreams have been put on hold at best, crushed at worst. We all hate each other. Everything is a lie unless it confirms what we knew all along, at which point it’s true, but it’s only true if the people saying it are people we agree with, people who look and talk and act like us. Conservatives are evil. Liberals are evil. The virus is fake. The virus is real. If you wear a mask when you go to the store, you’re doing your part to keep your family and your community safe. If you wear a mask when you go to the store, you’re bowing down to authoritarianism and yielding up your rights.

I’m sure I’ve missed something else, but I’ll stop there.

Adding to that list won’t do anything but add to our collective aggravation. You know what’s going on out there as well as I do. Much like the coronavirus itself, few of us are immune. There are days when it feels like we’re all being pushed right to the edge of something terrible, and we’re clawing at whatever we can to just hang on but we know we can’t hang on much longer. I’ll say that when this nationwide quarantine started, I compared it to 9/11 — a horrible thing we would endure but which would also bring us all together. I believed that. As painful as 9/11 was for those who experienced it, 9/12 was one of the best days in our country’s history. We mourned together. Set aside our differences. Saw one another as neighbors. For a few precious days we were not believers and atheists, right and left, pro-life or pro-choice.

We were just Us.

That hasn’t happened this time, has it? Far from bringing a broken nation together, these past months have only widened the gap between us. We can’t seem to agree on anything anymore.

I make it a point to keep this space somewhat light. Find out the big things hidden in the little things. Usually that means telling you about people I know or people I’ve met, ordinary folks who see life in extraordinary ways. Every writer faces a choice each time he or she sits down to a keyboard or a piece of paper: write something good about how we’re all different, or something great about how we’re all the same. Time and again, I steer myself toward the latter. Because I don’t care who you are or where you live or how you vote or how your skin is colored, you and I are the same in more ways than we’re not. That idea has always been foundational to the way I see the world. Sadly, it seems a lot of people don’t agree.

Somewhere along the line we quit seeing each other as human beings and started seeing them as their opinions.

We’ve forgot that people are precious, valuable not for what they believe but simply because they exist.

I wish I had a story this week. Nothing would make me happier than to tell you of some good ol’ boy I ran into at the store, or share a story from my childhood, or relay what some of the kids are doing around the neighborhood. I don’t have any of that. All that’s left to me this week is mourn what we’ve become, and maybe that’s a good start.

Maybe mourning is the only way we’ll ever change.

Washing away the mess we make

July 1, 2016 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

OuterBanks16 1

I stand upon a sliver of land off the North Carolina coast that I call home for one week a year, looking at what has been written in the spot of sand at my feet.

For seven years now, this spot has been my special place. All the information I need to navigate my day can be found right here without use of a screen or wifi, without any device at all.

Here, the tanagers and mockingbirds are my alarm clock. Deer move silent along narrow trails cut among the sea oats, calling the weather by the way their noses tilt to the air. Dolphins dance for their breakfast, twirling and slapping their tails in the calmness beyond the breakers, telling me when it is time to cast a line among the waves.

Yet while solitude here is plentiful, I am reminded that I have not wholly left all things behind.

There are others here as well, a family far down along the beach, a man patrolling the dunes, who have come to this place in search of the very comfort I crave.

I tend to study these others with the same sort of fascination I give to the constellations that shine over these deep waters at night, or the cockles and welks I pick up from sandbars that rise up and then fade in the changing tides. A trip through our tiny parking lot reveals that many who have answered the ocean’s siren call have traveled quite far—Ohio, Michigan, even Idaho. We are all travelers here. As such, friendliness presents itself as a thing ably given, but only with the unspoken expectation that all parties will be allowed to return to their own families, their own lives, in short order.

Umbrellas pop up along the beach in the early morning as though the sand has broken out in a multi-hued pox, each widely spaced so as to neither intrude nor interfere: islands on an island. This partition extends even into the ocean, where one is expected not to stray from the invisible line stretched outward from one corner of your square of beach to the next. If one does, should the waves you jump over or ride atop carry you in front of where your neighbors sit reading Dean Koontz and sipping glasses of wine bought at the island’s only Food Lion, your fun must be paused until you stand and fight your way back across the current to where you belong.

I’m unsure whether this need for boundaries is expressed unconsciously or with intent—if it speaks toward a desire to allow others their own attempt at peace and renewal, or if it rather tells of a deep-seated wariness toward short-term neighbors.

Hillary4prison But a little bit ago I took a long walk along the shore, and now I think I have that answer. Here among the piles of scallop shells and oysters and augurs, HILLARY FOR PRISON 2016 has been written into the sand. Not far down comes BERNING FOR NC. Then, TRUMP’S FIRED ’16. Each carved by a different finger or big toe, each thus far saved from the encroaching tide but not by the vandalisms of others.

I thought of two things as I stood by each of those pronouncements, and how those pronouncements had been scrawled at with such rage. One is that we can leave our problems and cares at home for a short while but not our divisions. The other is that increasingly, our divisions are becoming worse and angrier.

This in itself is nothing new; our country has always been an angry one. But our collective mood has changed these last years in such a way that it now feels more a souring that hangs between us all. Our rage and distrust has gone from a thing—the government, the economy—to a person—the hated Other who dares not believe as we believe.

It is a depressing thing, really. And to be honest, it is also the very thing I wanted to get away from for a few days. But here I am yet again, a neutral witness to a raging culture war, and it saddens me as much as I’m sure it does you. It saddens me a lot.

I’m only glad I’m out here alone with only the pipers and gulls. Should the Hillary supporter, Bernie person, and Trumpster meet, there may be violence. That’s where things have arrived at now, or at least where things are headed. And I’m willing to say that’s why even here this year, everyone mostly keeps to themselves. Because we’re all tired of it, all the fighting. Because we all just want a break from the notion that we’ve come to associate the opinions and stances of others with their entirety as people, and from the ugly truth that we have somehow gone from mere disagreement with those who think other than us, to wariness, to distrust, to blame, and now, finally, to hate.

I am a writer. That term is a broad one, though I’ve found its job description narrow enough to fit inside a single sentence: Every time you sit to work, try to tell the story of us all.

Thankfully, that story has been fairly easy to come by for most of my life. Lately, though, it’s gotten a bit harder. Diversity is the magic word now, just as the celebration of all that makes us different has in certain circles become our national religion. And while that might be right and good, I’ve found that celebrating of differences often casts aside all those things that makes us the same.

Like you, I don’t know where we’re going as a country. Like you, I’m worried about it. If the recent tragedy in Orlando speaks of a single thing, it isn’t that there are those who would focus upon the weapon a terrorist used rather than the ideology behind why he used it, or that it is far too easy for a sick man to purchase an instrument of war. To me, Orlando says that we have reached a point now where we can no longer even come together to mourn.

But I’ll leave you with this. That family I saw far down the beach made their way past me a little bit ago. Dad, mom, and two little kids. They did not avoid me as they passed, did not take the easier path toward the dunes to walk around me. The father did not look at me as though I were some potential threat, nor did his children glare at me with Stranger Danger eyes. Instead, the mother smiled and offered me a sand dollar they’d found just up the beach. The kids wanted to see my tattoo. And the dad, grinning, merely said, “How ya doin’, buddy?”

And you know what? I’m doing fine. I am.

OuterBanks16 2 Because I nodded and said as much to that beautiful family and then left all that scribble in the sand for the tide to wash away. I walked on as they walked on, all of us looking out toward the ocean with the breeze in our faces and the smell of salt filling our lungs, thinking much the same: in spite of the mess we are prone to make of things, ours is still a beautiful world.

Lessons learned at the Walmart

May 24, 2016 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

Walmart The scene: Very back corner of the local Walmart. Not the corner with the toys, which plays into much of the drama that is unfolding before me. No, I’m talking about the other back corner. Namely, the applesauce aisle.

The characters: One mother, aged mid-thirties, dressed in a faded pair of blue jeans and a Johnny Cash T-shirt that reads FOLSOM COUNTY PRISON in faded letters. Hair a frazzled blond.

Also her son, aged six by my estimation, wearing a similar pair of jeans and a look on his face that says Watch Out, I’m Gonna Blow.

And then there’s me, standing some ten feet away and playing the role of Gawker. Because this kid is about to get the snot knocked out of him.

Not that I can blame him, really. Sometimes Walmart puts me in just as much a foul mood as it has put this poor kid, who has just about had enough. He’s endured rows upon rows of boring stuff—tomato sauce and cereal and flour and canned soup, not to mention a questionable assortment of produce. Time has gone wobbly. Past and present and future have been sucked away within these four massive steel walls, creating some sort of hellish alternate dimension where Happiness cannot survive for long. He wants to go look at the toys or at least the DVDs, something besides groceries. Mom says no, not yet. She says groceries are more important than toys and DVDs. The boy knows is either a lie or further proof that this woman who gave birth to him, who carried him in her very womb and suckled him at her very breast, is some sort of alien overlord.

He tries to keep quiet, keep himself together. Tries to hang on. But it’s here in the applesauce aisle that he finally loses it, and only after waiting in agonizing silence as his mother spends a full two minutes pondering the difference between the cinnamon applesauce, the low-sugar, and the regular. He’s tired. He’s grouchy. He just wants to look at some toys for a little while.

What happens isn’t the sort of slow-building meltdown with which every parent is familiar. No, this is a full on natural disaster that goes from calm to catastrophic in less than three seconds. The boy wails. He thrashes. He stomps his feet and screams and yells “STUPID!” and “TOYS!” and other words I cannot decipher, all of which draws every eye near. There are sympathetic looks from other parents. A few nearby children offer slight nods of support.

Everybody knows what’s coming. People can go on and on about corporal punishment and the negative effects it has upon children, how it’s even a form of child abuse. But most folks consider those words as little more than academic ramblings that have no place in the real world, and the the world doesn’t get more real than the applesauce aisle at Walmart.

We’re all riveted—me, the young man a few feet away who looks as though he’s just decided he was never going to be a father, the old woman with a cart full of panty hose and microwave dinners who looks at the boy and whispers “Kids these days” in the same way another old woman no doubt had once looked at her. The only exception is the mother herself, still studying a package of low-sugar applesauce and one flavored with cinnamon.

She places both back on the shelf and looks at her son.

He crosses his arms, making a stand.

She bends down.

He steps back too late. Her arms shoot out and take hold of his shoulders the way a spider would its prey, making everyone flinch. The boy, now caught, struggles as his mother pulls him toward her. He fights and squirms and screams more before realizing none of it will do any good, at which point he plays his only remaining card—he goes boneless.

Unfortunately for him, his mother doesn’t care. She continues reeling him in until he is near her face, at which point she lifts his feet off the ground. The eighteen-year-old boy next to me turns to leave, likely remembering his own public spanking sometime past. The old woman only shakes her head (“Kids these days” she says again) and decides to keep watching.

But just as the moment we’ve all been expecting finally arrives, the mother does something that surprises us all. She doesn’t turn her son over and give him a stiff whack on the butt, doesn’t shake her finger in his face and give him a lecture about all she has to do to keep him alive. Instead, she lifts him up to her eye level, staring through those red cheeks and wet eyes and the snot running down out of his nose.

And kisses him.

That’s it, nothing more. Kisses him square on one red cheek and then lowers him back to the floor, where the boy can only stand shocked into silence as she goes back to studying the pros and cons of applesauce.

What crowd had gathered now moves off in search of other entertainment. Me? I linger. I take a minute, because I know something important has just happened here. Anger has been quelled. Rage has been stymied. Not by means of hotter anger or larger rage but by a single kiss—by a simple act of love that said I know you’re upset, but I promise it’ll be okay.

And do you know what I think? I think a lot of our problems with each other could be put away just by doing that. Not to meet screaming and yelling with louder screaming and yelling, but with a simple act of love. With a reminder that we’re all in this place where happiness can never last long, but we’re all in it together.

Refusing to toe the line

March 1, 2016 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

It’s Super Tuesday here in Virginia, otherwise known as A Day Off to my kids and Parent/Teacher Conference Day to my wife. Me, I’m already in line down at the church at the end of our street, waiting to cast my vote. And no, I ain’t saying who that vote’s for.

I will, though, tell you what’s on my mind:

300px-Bundesarchiv_Bild_183-H13160,_Beim_Einmarsch_deutscher_Truppen_in_Eger — Image courtesy of Wikimedia.com

The picture to your right was taken in October 1938 in the city of Eger, in what is now the Czech Republic. Germany had just invaded. Stormtroopers were marching in. I want you to particularly notice the third woman from the left.

Hitler, of course, didn’t do all of this alone. Germany was still in shambles a decade after the first World War. The Treaty of Versailles had forced the country to admit sole responsibility for causing the entire conflict. Traditional German territory was lost. A War Guilt clause was enacted, forcing Germany to repay millions of dollars in damages. Military restrictions were enabled. I would imagine it was a hard time to call oneself German. Hard to look at yourself in the mirror and call yourself a man or a woman.

So when a failed painter came along promising a strong government, full employment, civic order, and a reclamation of national pride, people flocked. When the Nazi propaganda poured forth, they cheered. And when Hitler eliminated all opposition and declared himself dictator, they pledged their allegiance.

Even now, almost seventy years after the fall of Nazi Germany, better minds than mine struggle to understand how an entire country could be brainwashed by such evil. I won’t try to add my opinion to that discussion other than to say that I suppose the fear of Hitler held just as much sway in the minds of the German people as his fiery words. Many bought into the notion of an Aryan paradise, to be sure. But many others didn’t and simply thought the prudent thing was to keep their heads down and do as they were told.

Which brings us to this picture:

It was taken in 1936 during a celebration of a ship launching in Hamburg, Germany. Hitler had been Chancellor of Germany for three years and already abolished democracy. German factories were rearming the country after a disastrous World War I. In three years, that country would invade Poland and plunge the world into the deadliest war in human history. Over fifty million people would perish.

The man circled was named August Landmesser. I don’t know much about him other than the fact that he’d already been sentenced to two years of hard labor. His crime? Marrying a Jew. You would think getting into that much trouble would change your attitude and convince you to toe the line.

Not so. Because there was August, standing in a sea of Germans on that day in 1936, folding his arms in front of him while everyone else Hiel Hitlered.

I don’t know what became of August Landmesser. I like to think he outlived the evil that befell his land and lived to a happy old age with his wife. Maybe that’s exactly what happened. Maybe not. But regardless, August was my kind of guy.

He refused to bow down to fear. He held strong against public pressure.

I would imagine some of the men around him in that picture bought into the evil Hitler was peddling. I would imagine some didn’t but saluted anyway. Not August.

August stood strong. Not by fighting and not by protesting, but for simply folding his arms. And for that, he has my undying admiration.

Anger, it seems, is everywhere now. So far as I can tell, it is the single force driving the coming election on both sides and the reason a great many of my townspeople got up so early this morning. We are fed up. Sick of how things are. Tired of the politicians and the ruling class and that great swath of Washington, D.C. that insulates itself and has no idea what’s going on Out There. Kick the bums out. Blow it all up. Take back the country. I’m willing to bet there are a whole lot of people out there who will do as a buddy of mine said a few minutes ago—“I get in there and pull that lever, I’m gonna do it with my middle finger.”

I’ve seen some mighty things done because someone somewhere got mad enough to change something. Just as I know some of the darkest times in history were the result of a people channeling all of their fear and anger into a savior who turned out to be a devil.

Our leaders can’t save us, folks. That’s up to me, up to you.

Don’t believe me, ask August.

A nation at war

June 29, 2015 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

Now comes the growing notion that we are at war, a phrase I’ve heard from more than a few these last days. A war fought not with guns and planes but words and ideas, the territory our hearts rather than battlefields. And though both sides cannot agree on much, there is an accord that this war contains both a “good” and a “bad” and that one is either on one side or the other—in this fight, there can be no spectators.

Nor can there be hesitation. If you disagree with a man’s right to marry a man or a woman’s right to marry a woman, if you do not believe that a Confederate battle flag is something akin to a Klansman’s hood, then your side is already chosen. Silent introspection is tantamount to cowardice, and for these things the punishment is to be thrown in league with the -ics and -ists. We are branded with the very thing that is now looked upon with contempt—a label.

I haven’t figured out why it’s gotten this way, or if “this way” is really just the way it’s always been. I’m still thinking things through. That’s what we should all be doing now. Not picking fights, not turning to the nearest social media platform to scream and blather. Think.

For instance:

I do not think anyone has a right to be happy. Live even a tiny amount inside this world and you will discover just how impossible and fleeting such a belief to be. This life was not built for happiness, but for the pursuit of it—for each of us to strike out into our days and search for meaning and beauty and purpose. The pursuit of happiness, yes, that is our right. And does that mean same-sex marriage should be legal? I don’t know. Perhaps. Is same-sex marriage and a homosexual lifestyle a sin? Maybe. But if homosexuality is a sin, that makes them like you and me in every way. Like everyone. It doesn’t matter to which sex you find an attraction, we’re all broken. We’re all the same.

The issue with the Confederate flag is an easier one for me. You see them here, flying from rusting poles in the front yards of the mountain folk or billowing from the beds of muddy 4x4s driven by teenage boys. To be honest, the sight of it has always made me uncomfortable. I know its history, and how in the years following the Civil War it was adopted by those who wished to keep down those who should have always been raised up. But I know this as well—I am a proud Southerner. The region of the country does indeed hold many of our nation’s sins, but it holds much more of its graces. I know good men died on both sides of that great national wound, men of courage, godly men. I will tell you that racism exists here, but no more and no less than in any northern city.

I suppose in all of this, what I would like to know is where the line is now that we cannot cross. It seems to me that’s an important thing to consider, for me and for everyone. Because there has always been a line, hasn’t there? A mark upon the boundary of our society’s forward progress that we gauge as that place where, if trampled upon, we risk losing some special part of ourselves. I’d like someone to tell me where that line now rests. I get nervous when it isn’t there, when no idea of constraint is apparent. Jut this morning I read an article from a respected news source calling for the acceptance of polygamy, a notion that has in the last years begun to take hold. Another article extolled the plight of pedophiliacs who now feel left out of this cultural shift, their reasoning being that they can no less alter the object of their sexual attractions than can homosexuals. I wonder how many who support gay marriage would support the legalization of these as well, and if not, what reasons they would offer. Is polygamy the line now, or will that too be crossed? Is it incest? But how many do you suppose would be in favor of that, assuming both parties to be consenting adults? Is not love the most vaunted of emotions now? Does not love trump all?

And of course things have not stopped with the removal of the Confederate flag from state grounds. Chain stores and online retailers have taken up that very mantle, refusing to offer them for sale to private citizens. My own Commonwealth has halted the issue of license plates bearing the seal of Sons and Daughters of the Confederacy. Now there is talk of expanding things further, changing the names of schools and public buildings that bear the names of Lee and Jackson and Stuart and Davis. I’ve even read that some are considering a petition to dismantle the Jefferson monument. Chuckle though you might, what of that other flag bearing stars and bars that has presided over so much bloodshed? What of our country’s own banner to which we stand at parades and ballgames and pledge our allegiance?

Tell me, please: where is the line? Or are we so intent to race forward that we no longer care if there is a line at all? Are the limits of society now -ics and -isms themselves?

I’d like to know. We’re supposed to be at war, you see. And I’m more than a little worried. Because no matter the cause or the combatants and no matter whether the spoils are blood or ideas, the first casualty of any war is always truth.

Errant negotiations

June 8, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

My children are arguing.

Not exactly breaking news, of course. Kids fight. It’s one of those givens in life that are about as surprising as the sun rising in the morning or a hot day in July. Blame it on summer vacation. I think they’re just tired of each other.

I’m not sure what caused the conflict; I just got home from work and caught the tail end of it. Something to do with Legos, from what I gather. Or an errant water balloon. One of those. Or maybe it was something else all together. You never can tell with kids. Kids can argue about anything.

I get caught up to speed by my wife, who doesn’t really know what the conflict is about herself. She was in the kitchen fixing dinner at the time. There was just a thump and a scream, followed by yells and accusations. That was enough for her. She sent both of the kids to their rooms to calm down.

I walk down the hallway to their bedrooms to say hello and gauge the amount of weeping and gnashing of teeth and find the Go To Your Room rule broken. My son is in my daughter’s room. She’s sitting Indian-style on the bed. He stands in front of her. Both are talking. Each have their arms crossed.

These are some serious negotiations, which is why I don’t barge in, make a Daddy Arrest, and charge them with not abiding by their mother’s wishes. It isn’t often that I have the opportunity to listen in on my children’s discussions. More often then not, they clamp up as soon as I enter the room and offer little more than, “Yes, Daddy?” I get plenty of opportunities to learn about what they think and believe in my conversations with them, but most times that seems like only half the story. What you think and say when your father or mother is around is often quite different than when it’s just you and a sibling in the room.

So I put my daughter’s bedroom wall between us and listen.

“I didn’t hit you on purpose,” my son says.

“Yes you did,” says my daughter. “You liked it. I saw it in your eyes.”

“You can’t see in my eyes. And you should have gotten out of my way.”

“I didn’t want to. It’s MY house too, you know.”

I’m not going to play anymore until you say you’re sorry.”

“Well I’M not going to play anymore until YOU say YOU’RE sorry.”

“All I was trying to do was get a Lego.”

“Well all I was trying to do is get a Lego, too.”

And on. And on and on.

Rather than interrupt, I decide to let them be. My kids will work this out, they always do. And then things will be fine until the next skirmish. I suspect my home isn’t much different than any other in that peaceful times are merely those few quiet days between wars of both opinion and blame.

In the meantime, I retire to the television and the evening news. Which, by the way, is much the same news as yesterday and the day before. Still the arguing, still the blaming. The system is broken, they say. I’m inclined to agree. Especially since the people who made the system are broken as well.

A commercial appears, one of those thirty-second spots about scooters old folk can ride around in to make themselves feel useful again (free cup holder included!).

The news is back, this time given by a pretty blond rather than a non-pretty man, as if bad news could seem a little better if she is the one telling it. She wonders aloud how we fix the problems in Washington, then poses the question to an educated man in a pair of thick glasses.

That’s when I turn the television off. I don’t need to listen to a pretty blond or an educated man to know how to fix things. I already know fixing them is pretty much impossible.

Because in the end, we’ll always prefer arguing rather than talking.

And we’ll always choose stubbornness over compromise.

We’ll always strive to reinforce our own opinions rather than admit those opinions might be wrong.

Call me pessimistic, that’s just how I see it.

Because our politicians really are representative of us all, if not in political philosophy than in brokenness.

Which means the adults we send to Washington aren’t really all that different than the kids we send to their rooms.