encouragement – Page 3

Affecting our world

March 3, 2015 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

There are stories I found and stories that have found me. As I sat at the small table outside the local coffee shop, I decided this was a story that found me. And I’m glad it did. I was also glad I was paying enough attention to see it, because it almost passed right by me.

The principal character was your stereotypical little old lady. Seventy-ish. Gray hair and a neatly pressed dress that was the sort of yellow that said Hello Spring! Making her way down the sidewalk in front of me.

The years had not been so kind to her, I noticed. The stoop in her posture gave the appearance that she was about to fall headfirst into the pavement. It was an accident waiting to happen that may have only been averted by the slight limp in her right leg. Yet she managed to not only make her way, but to do so with a smile on her lips and a heartfelt “Good morning!” to anyone in her path.

She would pause in her walk just long enough to offer one of those helloes and to look at the parking meters evenly spaced to her left. The distractions of both people and technology were enough to guarantee added minutes—and quite possibly hours, I considered—to her journey from wherever she came from to wherever she was going. And yet the thought crossed my mind that this was a person unconcerned with neither distance nor time. The destination wouldn’t matter if no enjoyment was had along the way.

She jumped when she came upon the third parking meter and looked around as if some great catastrophe was about to occur. Then she squared up in front of it like an old West gunslinger ready to draw. Instead of a six shooter, out came a coin. Into the meter it went. She waited for the click that guaranteed more time, patted the machine on the side like she would her grandson’s face, and walked on.

Next down the line was a young lady who had walked out of the courthouse not twenty minutes earlier. I had seen the yellow sheet of paper she was carrying and could only assume what was written on it constituted much more bad than good. She slumped against a newspaper box and lit a cigarette, then watched her exhale float up and disappear, no doubt wishing her troubles would do the same. There she had stood ever since, waiting for the miracle of either a better life or a quicker death.

The little old lady paused beside her and spoke. I couldn’t hear what was said and so tried to convince myself it didn’t matter. I had the feeling they were simple words and not profound. A comment about the beautiful day, perhaps, or maybe a short hello.

Regardless, a few moments later the old lady waved and left, continuing her curvy path toward me. The young lady watched her go and finished her smoke.
And then something curious happened.

Just as she stepped on the remains of her cigarette, the young lady smiled. A big, toothy smile. The best sort of smile.

“Good morning, young man,” the old lady said as she passed.

“Good morning, ma’am,” I answered.

She continued on, eyes forward and not back, content to watch what was around her rather than behind. Which was a tragedy, really. Because not only did that nice old lady miss the smile she put on that young girl’s face, she also missed a young man’s reaction when he sprinted out of a nearby shop sure he would find a ticket on the windshield of his car, but confused to find instead plenty of extra time left on his meter.

Yes. Quite a tragedy. Life was full of tragedies, I thought. Like the misfortune of hurrying or the heartbreak of circumstance.

But at that moment I realized what may be the biggest tragedy of all—that we can always see the effect of this world upon us, but rarely the effect of us upon the world.

Welcoming the storm

February 16, 2015 by Billy Coffey Leave a Comment

There’s a storm coming. No one around here needs to turn on the news to know this, though if they would, they’d be greeted with an unending stream of weather updates and projected snowfall totals. “Gonna be a bad one, folks,” the weatherman said a bit ago. But I knew that when I walked outside. It was the way the sun hung low in a heavy, gray sky, and how the crows and cardinals and mockingbirds sounded more panicked than joyful. It was the five deer coming out of the woods and the raccoon in the backyard, how they foraged for enough food to last them these next few days.

We are no strangers to winter storms here. Still, it is cause for some interesting scenes. There are runs on bread and milk, of course, and salt and shovels, and there must be kerosene for the lamps and wood for the fire and refills for whatever medications, an endless stream of comings and goings, stores filled with chatter—“Foot and a half, I hear,” “Already coming down in Lexington”—children flushing ice cubes and wearing their pajamas inside out as offerings to the snow gods.

It is February now. The Virginia mountains have suffered right along with the rest of the country these past months. We’ve shivered and shook and dug out, cursed the very snow gods that our children entreat to give them another day away from school. Winter is a wearying time. It gets in your bones and settles there, robbing the memory of the way green grass feels on bare feet and the sweet summer smell of honeysuckled breezes. It’s spring we want, always that. It’s fresh life rising up from what we thought was barren ground. It’s early sun and late moon. It’s the reminder that nothing is ever settled and everything is always changing.

But there’s this as well—buried beneath the scowls of having to freeze and shovel, everywhere I go is awash with an almost palpable sense of excitement. Because, you see, a storm is coming. It’s bearing down even now, gonna be a bad one, folks, I hear a foot and a half, and it may or may not already be coming down in Lexington.

We understand that sixteen inches of snow will be an inconvenience. We know the next day or two will interrupt the otherwise bedrock routine we follow every Monday through Friday. And yet a part of us always welcomes interruptions such as these, precisely because that’s what they do. They interrupt. They bring our busy world to a halt. They slow us down and let us live.

Come Tuesday morning, I expect to see a world bathed in white off my front porch. I expect to put aside work and worry and play instead. I’ll build a snowman and a fort. I’ll throw snowballs and play snow football and eat snowcream. I’ll put two feet so cold they’ve gone blue by the fire and sip hot chocolate. I’ll laugh and sigh and ponder and be thankful. For a single day, I’ll be my better self.

That’s the thing about storms. We seldom welcome them, sometimes even fear them. Too often, we pray for God to keep them away. Yet they will come anyway, and to us all. For that, I am thankful. Because those storms we face wake us up from the drowse that too often falls over our souls, dimming them to a dull glow, slowly wiping away the bright shine they are meant to have.

A world worth saving

January 8, 2015 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

Piney Mills may sound like a good enough place to live—one of those neighborhoods that offer a mixture of Cape Cods and ranches and the occasional bricked manor home, all with the stars and bars hanging from a pole, each with mats at the front door that say WELCOME. But it’s not like that at all. Piney Mills is instead a sprawling trailer court just outside of town that borders an expanse of national forest that is largely untrodden save for moonshiners, meth dealers, and love-struck teenagers in search of somewhere private to do some heavy petting.

In other words, every town has that one place where you don’t go unless you absolutely have to. For my town, Piney Mills is that one place.

It was a favor for a friend that took me there a couple weeks ago. He had a sofa that needed to be moved, I had the truck to move it. It was a minor errand that would take no more than an hour, but I still dreaded the trip. Piney Mills is an underbelly. When you go there, it’s best to prepare yourself for the things you’ll likely see—the poverty, the want, the neglect, yes. But mostly it’s the crass, profane attitudes the people there have adopted, either because of the sorry states of their lives or their bleak prospects of their futures.

I wasn’t disappointed in that regard. The decayed (and bullet-ridden, I might add) wooden PINEY MILLS sign at the entrance was guarded by a boy no older than six. He was dressed in jeans that were a size too short and a stained sweatshirt that read AUSTIN 3:16 SAYS I JUST KICKED YOUR ASS that was at least three sizes too big. As I pulled from pavement to gravel, he looked at me and offered a tiny middle finger.

I wound my way along the park’s main avenue. Trailers in various states of disrepair offered clues as to what the inhabitants considered important and not. I saw a bevy of duct-taped windows, porches littered with empty beer cases, and pristine satellite dishes clinging to sagging roofs. What few people that mingled about in the cold stared through dead eyes with a mix of resignation and distrust.

The guilt I felt wasn’t because my life had been offered more, but that I had to go to a place like that to be reminded of it.

The sofa in question was colored in a microfiber lime green and seemed to weigh as much as the truck that would transport it. My friend and I managed to hook it out of the narrow doorway and into the bed without causing further damage to either. He offered me coffee that I eagerly accepted. We spent the next half hour talking on his front stoop.

There is a rhythm to every place, even a place like Piney Mills. As the minutes wore on and the talk drifted from Christmas to work, the neighborhood awoke to a point where I was tolerated if not accepted. A woman across the street came outside long enough to wave and ask if we needed further help with the sofa. The man in the trailer beside us walked out to fetch his morning paper. He wore a threadbare purple bathrobe and nothing more. That didn’t stop him from noticing the errant newspaper that straddled the boundary between his trailer and the next, which he promptly delivered to an expectant and thankful elderly woman next door. Children appeared to play football in the street. For a while, even in that sad place, there was the sound of laughter and fun.

I realized then that I’d been missing something besides that appreciation for my life’s bounty. It was an important lesson, one I think is worth sharing here. It is simply that there is still joy in this world, still beauty. Still good. We might believe those things to be sparse and that might be true, but I don’t think so. Even in Piney Mills, that place the local police know well, you can find glimpses of our better selves. You can be reminded that while we are all fallen, dirty, incorrigible people, we are also capable of good and laughter.

I’m going to remember that the next time I turn on the television or pick up a newspaper. I’m going to hang on to that notion the next time my eyes are drawn heavenward and I’m tempted to say Come now, just come on and put an end to all this mess.

Because this world is still worth saving. It’s still worth our faith. It’s still worth living in.

Tidings of comfort

January 1, 2015 by Billy Coffey 3 Comments

Evernote Camera Roll 20131229 090031 This Christmas began what I hope will become a new tradition for the Coffey house. On Christmas Eve, my daughter sat at the grand piano in the equally grand foyer of the local hospital. For forty-five minutes, she provided background music to the steady pulse of whispers and footsteps and intercom pages.

“Silent Night.” “Joy to the World.” “Away in a Manger.” The notes shaky at first, timid, only to gain in both confidence and volume as the moments drew on.

I sat with my son and wife on the worn leather sofa in the middle of the foyer. The perfect spot to listen and nod and smile in support. Also, the perfect spot to see what would happen when those songs of hope and joy were played in such a setting. To see a bit of light cast into such a darkened place.

We were alone for a while. There is a current to every public place, one that flows and meanders of its own accord regardless of what attempts are made to alter it. So we all settled in, us on the sofa and she at the keys, joining the crowd rather than ask the crowd to join us.

The automatic doors leading to the parking lot squeaked with a certain poetic regularity. The people who entered did so with a slow purpose, as if walking through molasses. Their arms ladened with ribboned bags overstuffed with gifts. Plastic smiles that sunk no deeper than the first layer of skin greeted us. Their thoughts were plain enough that I saw them well. It is Christmas, these people thought, and I am here—not at home, but here.

My daughter played: Let every heart/Prepare Him room.

In those small spaces where the elevators clustered, those coming in met those going out. These people, too, could not hide their thoughts. I watched as orderlies pushed the freed in wheelchairs as worn and tired as the smile on the patients’ faces. They were greeted at the doors by family members who rushed in from the circular drive just outside—rushed in, I thought, not to escape the cold, but to rescue their loved ones before some unknown doctor reconsidered the discharge order.

My daughter bolder now, smiling down at the ivory keys: And heaven and nature sing.

A nurse stopped on her way to some far-flung department to listen. An old man sat in the chair across from us, drawn there more by the music than the promise of comfort. The December sun glinted off the wall of windows in front of us. Puffy clouds raced overhead, molded into shapes by the wind. More people stopped—patients and visitors, security officers, doctors. Not for long and only to smile as those notes rang out (Round yon virgin, mother and child) before walking on with a nod and a smile.

And slowly, ever so gently, that current changed.

It was not diverted, nor could it have been. This was a hospital, after all. In such places where so much life mingles with so much death, the heaviness in the air is both constant and unchanging. And yet I saw smiles during my daughter’s recital, and I heard the hard sighs of comfort and the sound of applause.

And I knew then this great truth—we cannot heal what has been irrevocably broken. We cannot bring peace in a life where there will always be war, nor healing to a place fallen from grace. Such things are beyond our ability. We have no such power.

Yet even if we are powerless to change this world, we still have the power to nudge it a bit in the direction it should go. To bring joy to another, even for a moment. To inspire and lift up. To give hope.

To endure.

Have a God Day

October 27, 2014 by Billy Coffey 8 Comments

Screen Shot 2014-10-27 at 10.00.46 AM My son is of the age when toys are no longer toys as much as they are necessities. That’s how he approaches me with whatever new trinket has caught his eye—“It’s not just that I want this, Dad. I NEED it.”

Rarely works, of course. No ten-year-old boy NEEDS a basketball hoop, not when there’s one on the street just next door for anyone to use, or a new video game, or a Nerf gun that will end up in the grass by the creek, forgotten.

For the past month, it’s been a cell phone. His reasoning has been strong—I’m not home right after school some days, you might need to call or check in, that sort of thing. He’s wise enough to leave out the real reason (all of his friends have one; they look like cyborgs, faces always stuck in some sort of screen). But his sister has a phone, and, well, every kid comes born with an instinctual knowledge that if you can’t convince your parents, you can always wear them down.

So: a cell phone. He carried it home from the store last week with all the care and love as a father would bring his firstborn. Not a smartphone (he couldn’t wear us down that much), but the sort that can only call and text, the kind my son associates with the uncool and the elderly.

Thus far, all has gone well. The phone hasn’t gone lost, hasn’t ended up in the grass by the creek. He hasn’t used it to call Brazil or Kuala Lumpur. But my son does text. My son texts a lot. And, for whatever reason, mostly to me.

They come in the mornings especially, when I’m on my way to work. A steady stream of smiley faces and winks that always end with HAVE A GOD DAY. Great kid, my boy, even if he is a little spelling-challenged. He says he’s still getting the hang of typing with his thumbs. But his texts to me? He says he reads those twice before he hits send, making sure every letter and word is right. Which means my son doesn’t want me to have a GOOD day at all. He wants me to have a GOD one.

I told him that sounded just fine but that I didn’t know what a God day was. Turns out, he has them all the time.

My son says a God day usually starts out like any other, meaning you still don’t want to get out of bed. But then you do, you get up and get dressed and have breakfast, and that’s when the God day starts—when you go out—because my son says you need God in your bed but you need Him in the world especially.

On a God day, you pay more attention to how the sun is coming up over the mountains than you do all the traffic. And when you have to stop for the train, you don’t mumble things you’re not supposed to near as much as you wave to the engineer and the people you’re stuck there with.

On a God day, you say hi to everyone and ask them how they are, because that’s what people need.

On a God day, you always do your best no matter what it is. That doesn’t mean you’ll always succeed (“This isn’t a fairy tale, Dad,” my son says), but failing doesn’t hurt near as bad if you know you tried.

On a God day, you pray. A lot.

On a God day, you always laugh at least five times, because even if the world is full of sadness, that doesn’t mean your heart has to be that way, too.

On a God day, you come home and hug the ones you love, because they’re the best things God has given you and that’s why you need to take care of them.

I like that. I think my son’s onto something. So no matter who and where you are and what’s going on in your life, I hope you have a God day.

Making a memory

August 21, 2014 by Billy Coffey 5 Comments

We are by the creek, my son and I, our backs against the grass and our feet in the water, looking first to make sure the snakes are gone and then to the two white wrappers between us.

“You’re first tonight,” I tell him.

“Orange,” he says, “because it’s like the sun.”

I hand him the wrapper on the left and look out toward the mountains. Sure enough, the sun looks orange. That means red for me. Good. I like red.

He opens the package and licks the popsicle inside. There is a satisfying smack on the end, followed by, “Aaah.”

We sit for a while and watch in silence, watch the robin searching for supper in the front yard and the bumblebee doing the same in the flower bed and my wife and daughter watering the hanging baskets. I don’t know what my son is thinking, but I’m thinking that sometimes you can be closer to someone when you’re not talking and just enjoying their company.

These post-supper trips to the creek with popsicles were his idea. The inaugural event was held on the first day of summer vacation. Seems like that was just yesterday, but it was almost two months ago. Time ticks faster when we’re having fun. That’s what my son told me the other day. Then he said he sat for five minutes and watched the clock and discovered it ticks just the same whether you’re looking or not.

There’s another lick and smack, but this one is followed by a sigh. I ask him what’s wrong.

“Summer’s almost over,” he says.

I ask him how he knows that, and he answers that he saw the newspaper last Sunday. There was a back-t-school ad mixed in with the comics section. He says seeing that made him feel like he did the time he ate chili and then ice cream after.

“I want it to stay summer forever,” he says, “like on Phineas and Ferb.”

I don’t know what to say to that. I’d like it to stay summer forever too, and offering up some cockamamie wisdom about how all good things must come to an end would only depress the two of us more. Instead, I start singing the Phineas and Ferb theme song. Partly because I have to say SOMETHING, but mostly because it’s nearly impossible to sing and be depressed at the same time.

He joins in halfway through. When we finish, the lick/smack/sigh is replaced by lick/smack/smile. Much better.

“Dad, can I ask you something?”

“Sure,” I tell him.

“Are we making a memory?”

I bite down on my red popsicle and think. “I reckon so,” I tell him.

The smile is bigger now. It’s the sort of smile you get after you’ve been carrying a very heavy something for a long while and can finally lay it down.

He is silent again, but not because he didn’t hear me. He’s too busy to talk. He’s more concerned with doing the one thing children always excel at and adults usually fail miserably—being in the moment. His eyes are bugged and his breathing is deep, steadying himself against the picture his mind is taking.

The cool water flowing over his hot toes, the orange sun peering from the peaks of blue mountains, sounds of robinsong in the trees and frogs in the woods, the sight of his mother and sister and the gentle mist of hose water over purple and white flowers, orange popsicle leaking down his fingers, the bright sky and the warm breeze, the first star of the night and the knowing that for this one instant, the whole world is peaceful and good and right.

He is living this moment, and when he is done he will tuck it into a secret place in his heart and keep it safe. He will tend this moment and nurture it and keep it whole. Alive.

And on some cold and distant January day that promises little more than spelling tests and word problems, my son will sit in his small desk at school and pull that memory out. He will look out the window and see bright skies rather than somber heavens and green leaves rather than bare trees. He will hear robinsong and taste orange popsicle and feel cool water running over hot toes.

It will be winter then and he will be at school. He will know then that the world is not peaceful and good and right, but he will gain strength knowing it once was and thus may well be again.

All because of the memory he made with me on this summer night, here by the creek.

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