dreams – Page 4

On settling and being settled

January 4, 2012 by Billy Coffey 7 Comments

The thing about Troy Heatwole is that he’s settled. He’ll be the first to tell you that. Not outright, mind you. Troy never says anything outright and never has. He prefers instead to take the long way around to the point he’s trying to make. So instead of simply saying, “I’m settled,” he’ll say something like, “I ain’t as young as I used to be an’ I ain’t as smart, but the world’s quiet.”

And really, who doesn’t long for a quiet world?

Not that life doesn’t pose any challenges. Troy’s like all of us in that he has bills to pay and ends to meet. That’s not what I’m talking about when I say he’s settled. What I’m talking about is that Troy not only knows his place in the world, he’s accepted it with all the happiness and peace one could ask. There is no striving in him, no longing, no unmet expectations. Just a nice, peaceful quiet.

I say this because I want to say that I envy Troy Heatwole. Not so much for what he possesses (which isn’t much aside from a small cabin in the woods, a battered Ford truck, and a coon dog named Bo), but for what he has. There’s a difference between those things. What you possess can be taken from you. What you have can’t. And Troy possesses a settled life. I do not.

But that’s not really what I’m getting at, either. I suppose I’m taking a page out of Troy’s book—I’m taking the long way around to the point I’m trying to make. How else could I bring myself to admit that I’m envious of a man whose life, settled or not and quiet or not, revolves around cleaning and draining septic tanks?

Oh yes, that’s right. Troy’s the septic man.

It isn’t that he loves his job. He does, however, find a purpose in it. Because just as Troy once told me that “Even the Lawd woulda had trouble lovin to do what I do,” he also said that, “Dis here world’s fulla crap, an’ somebody’s gotta clean it all up.” Wise words, those. Kind of makes you think.

I pass Troy on the road often. Our workdays tend to end around the same time and converge at a stoplight just outside of town. He usually gets the green while I’m stuck at the red. He blows by in his big pumper truck, windows down and long stringy hair waving in the breeze. And smiling, always smiling, because Troy has a quiet life and he’s settled.

Me, I’m not.

That’s not a big deal, I guess, assuming you’re not closing in on 40 and you don’t have a family and a mortgage. All of which describes me. If I’m ever going to be settled, this should be the time when I should get started. But I can’t. Even though I’ve been blessed with much, I can’t escape the feeling there’s more out there I should be shooting for. There are other lands to travel and other things to do and other Me’s to be. I want to settle and yet I feel I shouldn’t settle for less than I should.

That, in a nutshell, is why I’m envious of Troy the septic man. He has no need to ponder such things. He’s found his life. He doesn’t have to wander anymore.

But there are times when he passes me at the stoplight after a long day and I see his hair waving and his face smiling and I think differently. I think that maybe I have it all backwards. Maybe we should all be craving to be a little more than what we are. Maybe we should all be wanting to grow a little more each day.

Deep down we all want to be settled, but that may be more a trap than a treasure.

Maybe only as far as we’re unsettled is there any hope for us.

Future Kevin

October 5, 2011 by Billy Coffey 9 Comments

He sits by himself at a small table in the back of the lunchroom. Chin in his hand, eyes, down. His fingers flick at discarded bits of the day’s pepperoni pizza that were missed by the lunch lady’s dishrag. The afternoon sun filters through tiny handprints on the windows, making the grass stains on his too-short jeans glow a deep emerald.

He sees me as I walk in—there’s something about a door opening that makes even the meekest of look up in reflex—and turns aside. Today is Friday, and I told him I would need an answer by the end of the week. But his back is turned away and his body is folded in upon himself to make him as small as possible, and I think no. No, he still doesn’t know.

Waiting for my kids in the school cafeteria gives me a sense of connectedness to a part of their lives I mostly miss. I get to see where they eat, how they interact with others, what kinds of people surround them. And I get to see other kids, too.

Kids like Kevin. The one alone at the small table in the back.

He’s there every day, waiting for someone to pick him up and trying to stay hidden until they do. I said hello to him Monday afternoon. I was a bit early that day, and there was no one else to talk to. I was counting on a one-sided conversation. Kids like Kevin—and there seems to be many of them today, yes?—desire nothing but the next moment, to continue on, regardless of the unnamable weight they bear. I didn’t know what Kevin’s was (and I still don’t), but I knew it was there. I could feel it.

So I said hello. Sat down beside him at the small table and flicked a bit of food away—it was French fries that day—and waited for him to talk. It took prodding, but he did. General stuff. Nothing of home. Kids like Kevin, with their unnamable weights and downcast eyes, don’t talk much of home.

He’d been in trouble that day. Kevin showed me the white slip of paper his mama had to sign. Daydreaming, the note said. I told him I daydreamed a lot and that daydreaming was fun, but school was important.

“No it isn’t,” he said.

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” I asked him.

Shrug.

“Come on,” I said. “You have to want to do something.”

Shrug.

“When I was your age, I wanted to be an astronaut. Didn’t work out, but I still look at the stars a lot.”

Kevin said nothing.

“Tell you what, I’ll be back on Friday. You think about it and let me know then. Deal?”

He said he’d try. The kids came and we left. I waved to Kevin as we went out the door. He didn’t wave back.

And now, he’s ignoring me.

“Hey Kevin,” I say.

Shrug.

“Been doing any thinking about what I asked?”

His eyes said yes. I pulled a chair up to the table and sat. My mind tried to think of something little Kevin wanted to be. Maybe an astronaut, like I wanted once upon a time. Or President, though I figured there weren’t many kids nowadays who wanted to grow up to be that. Maybe a scientist.

“I guess I’m going to work at Little Caesar’s like my mom.”

Oh.

“That’s all you want to do?” I ask him. “I mean, that’s great if that’s all you want to do. But…that’s all you want to do?”

He lowers his head to find something to flick on the table. “That’s all I can do,” he says.

“I don’t believe that,” I tell him, and Kevin shrugs.

The kids are on their way. I say goodbye to Kevin and leave him at the table. I don’t know when someone will pick him up, don’t know when I’ll see him again. But I know I’ll worry about him. A boy like that, a boy that young, should see this world as one of possibility and magic. His sights should be set higher than where they are. He should believe in himself more.

But I wonder if we’ve reached that point where we no longer inspire our children to become more than ourselves. If we see them as mere carbon copies, destined to make our own mistakes and suffer through our own failures.

And if we’ve accepted the lie that says greatness in life is reserved for all but shy boys in too-small jeans who sit alone at the lunchroom table.

Longing for the good life

July 27, 2011 by Billy Coffey 15 Comments

“Excuse me,” I said, “can you help me with this? I have no idea what I’m doing.”

The twenty-something man—Kurt was on the nametag, with Can I Help You? under that—looked at me and smiled. When he did, the ring in his nose inched upward in a way that reminded me of winking. I fought the urge to reach out and pull on it.

“First time?” he asked.

“Yep.”

“Well, things are tough all over, right?”

Since it’s just the two of us, he makes his way around the counter. The first shift at the factory would be over in fifteen minutes, which meant he had about twenty to get me taken care of before the afternoon rush. No problem. I’d be out of there by then.

“Here.” He pulled one of the slips from the kiosk and reached for a tiny green pencil with VA LOTTERY stamped on the side. “Here’s your ticket. You have five choices, just fill in the numbers you want.” He pointed to one of the boxes at the bottom—“Powerball goes here. Easy peasy.”

I thanked Kurt and he left me to brew more coffee and add another roll of quarters to the register drawer. If I’d asked him, he would have said he was getting ready for the rush. But I suspect that’s a lie, the truth being something a bit more esoteric—a person needs his privacy while choosing his lotto numbers.

That was the first time I’d ever played the lottery. And while Kurt was right when he said things were tough all over, that’s not why I played. It’s research for my next novel, a story in which the lottery plays an important role. And since I couldn’t very well write about something I didn’t know, off to the 7-11 I went.

But there was more than simple ignorance working against me. There was also disdain. I’ve never been a fan of the lottery. I’ve seen what it does to people. I frequent the 7-11 in town often, and each time I see the poorer folk of my fair town preyed upon by the false gods of riches and good fortune, plunking down dollar after dollar that would be better spent on bills and groceries. They say the Virginia lottery paves our roads and saves us money. That might be so. But all that makes me do is think about my smooth ride to and from work and how my comfort is surfaced by the unrealized dreams of others.

But I played anyway. Just to learn, just to write. Filled out one ticket and handed it to Kurt, who exchanged it for a receipt that went into my pocket. I left just as the afternoon rush pulled in.

The Powerball drawing was that night at 10:55 pm. I’ll be honest, I thought about my ticket more than a few times. Thought about it when the mailman shoved six bills into the box. When I remembered the grumblings of cutbacks at work. When I thought about just how better my family’s life could be with a few million dollars in the bank.

You don’t have to say it. The “Money isn’t everything” line , I mean. I know that. Believe it, too.

But still.

I sat there in front of the television and waited for the man in the cheap tuxedo and the woman in the sequined dress whom Kurt said would announce the winner. Sat there and watched as the big lotto machine whirred to life and all those numbered ping pong balls fluttered in the air. Sat there and dreamed of a life when finally—finally—I wouldn’t have to worry about electric bills and gas money and if the water heater was going kaput.

And you know what? It was a good life. It really was.

And also a life that evaporated in the twelve seconds it took for the machine to spit out the winning numbers.

I’d lost. Terribly. I’d lost as bad as a person could. Didn’t even get one number right.

Yet I still remember that world my longings built, one where want and worry were nonexistent and where I could exchange one set of problems for other, hopefully less intense ones. And I suppose that’s why so many people line up in front of Kurt each day. They don’t want to let that dream go, no matter how elusive and impossible—perhaps even immoral—they may be.

But then I ponder the fact that we all long for fairer lands, no matter how fair our surroundings here are. We’ll always want more or better or different. The learned among us call that a flaw.

Not me.

I think longing is a blessing. No matter how much its barbs and spurs prick, I welcome them.

Because we all long for fairer lands, and that is a holy longing. A beacon from God.

Guiding us home.

A letter to me

July 6, 2011 by Billy Coffey 28 Comments

When helping your parents clean out their attic, it helps if you approach the task as a recovery mission. You aren’t discarding, you’re salvaging. I know this from experience. I did it three weeks ago.

We found the normal things—Christmas decorations long forgotten, toys long neglected, and several items of which no one can remember using, much less purchasing. We found not-so-normal things as well. Like the box of notebooks.

You could say I caught the writing bug early; I was filling notebooks before I understood what words were, drawing pictures of the sun and trees and describing them with an jumble of mismatched and incoherent letters. These, sadly, were not in the box.

The high school stuff was.

Lyrics mostly, as if the words to Skid Row’s “18 and Life” and Cinderella’s “Coming Home” were so moving, so utterly profound, that they warranted preservation for the ages.

There were thoughts as well. Plenty of them, all sopping with the angst and shallowness that define the teenage years. Some were laughable in their naivety—“The suddenness of life is a guarantee the soul is eternal.” Others, to my surprise, weren’t so bad at all—“We have lost much of the language of religion, but little of our longing for a faith in something larger than ourselves.”

Memories, all. Not the false ones either, the ones that are saccharine in the remembering. These were more a mixture of sweet and salty, proof that my recollections were true. Regardless, the decision of whether the box was to be discarded or salvaged was an easy one.

It all went to the junk pile save for a single sheet of paper torn from the notebook on top. The last page, as a matter of fact. Written two days before I graduated.

It was a letter. Not to the me I was then, but to the me I am now.

A portion:

“I don’t know who you are (hard to do that, especially since it’s tough enough knowing who I am). I don’t know what you’re doing, either. But I can make the sort of guess with both that people do when they see a falling star or a discarded eyelash, the sort of guess that has a wish at the end. So I’m guessing you’ve made it. I’m guessing you’re rich and famous and happy, and I’m guessing you’re far away. And I figure as long as I guess and wish those things, I’m going to be okay. Because that means I’ll eventually be you.”

I remembered writing that. It was late at night. I was outside, scribbling in my notebook while watching the stars and sneaking a Marlboro red. I remembered how I felt then—sweet and salty, so it must be true—knowing that part of my life was about to fall away and another was ready to begin.

I was afraid. Afraid of the world and my place in it. And in that fear I wrote that night with a sense of purity and honesty that even now I try to capture each time I reach for pen and paper.

I wrote those words in secrecy, and now, all these years later, I snatched them away in secrecy as well. No one saw me stash that letter into my pocket. I’ve kept it since on the top of my office desk, there and not there, like a sickness hidden from a doctor for fear it is a symptom of something more serious.

“So I’m guessing you’ve made it. I’m guessing you’re rich and famous and happy, and I’m guessing you’re far away. And I figure as long as I guess and wish those things, I’m going to be okay. Because that means I’ll eventually be you.”

I couldn’t let those four sentences go. They weren’t supposed to be disposed. They were supposed to be salvaged. I needed to answer myself.

Today is my birthday. I suppose by some sort of twisted logic, that’s why I waited until now to send a note of my own back in time. After all, birthdays are much like graduations. They are a falling away and a beginning.

So on my porch this morning in front of the mountains and the birds and the rising sun, I wrote this:

“I’m not rich. I’m not famous. And though twenty-one years separate us in time, only five miles separate us in distance. But I’ve found things greater than those, and I’ve become happy in the finding. Because the things you search for as a child are not the things you stumble upon as an adult, and thank God for that.”

All will wash away

June 15, 2011 by Billy Coffey 6 Comments

(Originally published June 17, 2009)

You can’t beat a stroll along the surf in the evening. It is the perfect desert for a day that has offered plenty of feasts for both the eyes and the spirit.

Using the setting sun as my compass, I skirt the incoming tide and pause every few steps to snatch a stray shell before the retreating waves can steal it away. My toes dig into the wet sand as the pipers and gulls flutter around me, searching for one last snack before finally calling their day done.

This will be my last evening at the beach. Sometime early Thursday morning we will brush the sand from our clothes, pack our suitcases, and head west for home. (A secret, though, between you and me: I’m not shaking my sand off. I want to walk around with it on me a little while longer.) So tonight I am enjoying one last walk to take it all in.

And I’m not the only one. A few yards in front of me is a young surfer just out of the water and taking the long way home.

He places his board down just beyond the surf and bends as if tying an imaginary shoe. He slowly traces something into the wet sand with a finger and, still stooping, considers the marks. A slow and solemn nod displays his approval, then he rises and walks on.

So do I, pausing after a few steps to pick up a clam shell for my daughter. I look back up to see the surfer now heading for dry sand and the boardwalk, where a battered red bicycle waits to take him home. Curious, I walk ahead to the spot where he had bent down and find these four words:

ALL WILL WASH AWAY.

I look over and see him climb onto the bike and tuck his surfboard under his right arm. There he sits, staring out at the beach.

And here I stand, staring down at these profound words.

You don’t generally expect such deep thinking from hip surfer dudes, just as you don’t generally expect it from redneck hicks. In that, we are kindred spirits. And in more, too.

Because these past few days have brought much the same sentiment from me. I’ve been coming here since I was a child, and that sense of permanence has always been a source of comfort. The ocean never changes. It is immense and beautiful and old and will always be such. Yet while it is fixed, I am not. I may visit this same place every summer, but I always bring along a different me.

The me this year is much different than the person who last gazed upon these waters, though exactly how different I cannot say. Rather than time dulling the edges of our lives, I think it sharpens them. It makes clearer the things that matter and the things that do not. Perhaps it is because my visit this year falls just a few weeks shy of my birthday that my thoughts have been centered more upon the future than the present. Thoughts that are best summed in the four words below me.

ALL WILL WASH AWAY.

There are times when life becomes simply unbearable for me, when the tides crash in much more than ease out and the treasures life gives me are snatched away and demanded back. And I’m sure I’m not alone. I have a feeling the young man on the red bike has recently suffered through something like that. I have a feeling you have suffered through that as well. Because we all have things in our lives that scare us and leave us to quake at the possibility that we are to merely borrow them for a time instead of holding them forever.

We all fear that all we love will be consumed by the enormity of this world and erased forever.

Yet still we arrive daily in our lives to write upon the shore, to cast our hearts and our hopes into the ebb and flow of our days in faith that we just may happen upon something that neither time nor tides can erase.

That is our quest in life. To find the eternal. To find that which cannot be washed away.

Would you rather

June 6, 2011 by Billy Coffey 7 Comments

The bad part about my son getting sick is that he’s sick and my heart breaks with each cough and hasty trip to the bathroom. The good part about my son getting sick is that I often get to take a day off work and stay home to help him recuperate.

That’s how I spent last Thursday. Him and I together on the sofa, he with a blanket and his DS, me with pen and paper. The goal was a simple one—to get him better, and to get me a thousand words on my next novel.

Of course, goals seem to fly out the window when it comes to tending to a sick child. Especially when that child is more intent to play and talk than to rest and heal. We reached an agreement when we both decided watching a movie was what we really wanted to do. He voted for Star Wars. I voted for Lord of the Rings. We compromised for Pirates of the Caribbean.

I actually thought we’d watch the movie, he being sick and all. But no. My son is much like myself in that he’s quiet unless around someone he knows well. And since he knows me well…

“Daddy?”

“Yeah bud?”

“Would you rather be Jack Sparrow or Captain Barbossa?”

“Jack,” I said. My answer was both immediate and a little embarrassing. I didn’t want my son to think I spend a lot of time thinking about such things. Which I do. “I guess, I mean. I guess Jack. Never thought about it, though.”

“I’d rather be Jack, too.”

The movie went on. Cannonballs and swords and cries of “Arrgh!”

Then, “Daddy?”

“Yeah bud?”

“Would you rather be a cursed pirate or a girl?”

“A cursed pirate.”

“Me, too. Wanna know why?”

“Tell me.”

“Because cursed pirates are cool and girls are not.”

“Maybe. But one day you’re gonna think girls are cool.”

More movie. A buried treasure. A battle at sea. But by then those things didn’t matter much because my son had begun playing his favorite game.

Would You Rather.

It started with a book he brought home from school one day filled with all sorts of questions. Would you rather this or would you rather that. Some were comical—Would you rather eat boogers or lick a frog’s face? Others were difficult—Would you rather hit a game-winning homerun or score a game-winning touchdown? A few were even thoughtful—Would you rather make someone’s wish come true or make your own wish come true?

You get the idea. He was enthralled. And as I subscribe to the philosophy of I-don’t-care-what-you-read-as-long-as-it’s-not-Tiger Beat when it comes to my kids, I allowed it.

Sometimes I think that philosophy needs to be reexamined.

Because after an entire day of playing Would You Rather, I decided I Would Rather Not.

Then again, I discovered that an entire day of playing Would You Rather allowed me a long look into the way my son sees the world and the way he sees himself. And by that I don’t mean just that he’d rather be a fish rather than a person because “If I was a fish, I could pee anywhere.”

Other things. Deeper things.

Things like the fact that he’d rather live an exciting life than a long life. And that he’d rather wait for spring than wait for winter.

And my favorite—that he’d rather have me as a dad than even Captain Jack Sparrow.

I suppose in a way games such as this play an important role in a young child’s life. It gets them used to making choices, and life is nothing but a series of choices.

Would you rather be someone else or your best self?

Would you rather not risk failure or chase your dreams?

Would you rather suffer a broken heart or never dare to love?

Would you rather spend your eternity with God or apart from Him?

See what I mean? Choices. That’s what life is all about. That’s where our battles are fought.

Where our present is made and our future fashioned.

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