Snow Day

by Billy Coffey

  “Your job is to find those pieces, starting with the one I have, and to help others to find their own. Eleanor, she doesn’t seem to have too many of the pieces, does she? So why don’t you go back there and help her look?

  “And just a little reminder—it’s not all about you. I know what’s going on in your life. I know what I’m doing. Don’t worry about it. Quit focusing on your bruises instead of the gaping wounds in others. And Merry Christmas.”

  It was the first time I had ever heard God speak to me that way. Sort of snarky and sarcastic and nothing at all like Morgan Freeman in Bruce Almighty. But I figured God gave us His truth in the way we could best understand it at the moment, and at that moment I thought I needed God to speak to me that way. I needed a kick instead of a nudge. And the end result was just what He wanted. I stopped and turned around.

  God was right, of course. I had spent the whole day sporting my what-about-me attitude, pausing briefly here and there to satisfy my curiosity and try to get my mind off things. But my problems were always there, just in the back of my mind, just beyond whatever thought I happened to be thinking.

  I had always felt that there were three things you must do in order to make any day a good one: laugh at least twice, tell someone you love them, and do some good. I’d done the first two. But aside from getting Mandy her bread and milk, I’d not done the third. Why? Because I was too wrapped up in myself. Because I had forgotten that I was a soldier in a war not of body, but of spirit. One waged against the effects this world can have upon the hearts of those who live in it.

  There were plenty of things in life that we just couldn’t fix. But that didn’t mean we couldn’t necessarily make them better.

  I strolled up the driveway and rang the bell. There was silence. The curtains moved again. And the door opened.

  17

  Rules for the Road

  I said my good-byes to Eleanor with the promise that I would visit again. My snow day was wearing on, and if I wasn’t careful I wouldn’t make it to the college in time to apply for the job they were advertising. If that was what I decided to do. Change was something that came to every life, but that didn’t necessarily mean I would welcome it.

  Rather than giving in to my emotions regarding the subject, I decided to use a little logic. As I double-timed it up the road toward home, I began a mental list of the pros and cons of working at a college. I was about halfway down the list of cons (Number four: colleges are usually the abodes of very strange people who harbor some very strange ideas) when I again heard the sound of an engine.

  Around the corner of the next block came a 1969 Mustang. The driver never halted at the stop sign, never even paused, and I wasn’t sure if that was because he was unwilling or unable. The fact that the back end of the car was fishtailing convinced me it was probably the latter with much of the former thrown in. The car was too powerful for the slick road and the tires were too worn to grab the slush. I was sure he wasn’t going to stop until his irresistible force met the nearest immovable object, which in this case was the house on the opposite corner. For a split second I thought a tragedy was forming before my eyes, but at the last moment the car righted itself.

  The close call would have probably been enough to get most drivers to ease off the gas a bit. Not this one. As soon as the grill was realigned with the middle of the street, the car took off again.

  “Slow down, Chris!” I yelled as he sped past.

  “What’s up, dude?” he answered, hanging halfway out of the driver’s side window and waving. I started to yell again, but it would have been pointless. Chris was already around the next corner.

  Chris Davies lived a few streets over with his parents and a younger sister. Nice family. And Chris was a nice guy, though a little reckless sometimes. And in the three weeks since he’d turned sixteen, he’d been reckless a lot more often.

  Our culture generally marked off the passage from child to adult by the signposts we pass. Getting a driver’s license was among the first. Chris passed his driving test without incident, though he did admit to throwing up that morning from nervousness. The picture on his license betrayed his true feelings about the accomplishment—all teeth, little face.

  Of course, the test itself was the easy part. Learning to drive is not something one grasps at once. It takes both time and a measure of humility to learn the rules of the road, and those were two things Chris had in short supply at the moment thanks to his girlfriend, Heather. Who, by the way, was also a cheerleader. When you’re sixteen, time doesn’t matter. And when you’re sixteen and dating a cheerleader, humility tends to get tossed out the window.

  “There’s only one rule to driving,” he told me one night.

  “And what’s that?” I asked.

  “Don’t get caught.” Then he laughed, held up his hand, and said, “Come on, dude, give me one!”

  I didn’t.

  As my father said when I was Chris’s age, the only real cure for stupid is self-administered. Chris would have to find out on his own that the rules for driving were not constricting laws, but Reasonable Directions.

  That was what Chris’s father called them. I had watched him teach Chris to drive, the two of them traveling up and down the road with varying degrees of success. Chris always had a look of sheer joy plastered on his face. His father used to look as though he were sharing a ride with the angel of death.

  His dad decided to implement what he calls Reasonable Directions. Principles that, if heeded, would keep his son out of both trouble and the hospital. He drilled Chris in them. He hung them on the refrigerator in the kitchen and tacked them onto the wall beside Chris’s bed. Chris once rattled off the Reasonable Directions to me, giving them as much thought as he was giving his life.

  It occurred to me in that moment that Chris had yet to discover that learning to drive a car was a lot like learning to drive a life. Both revolved around laws whose mechanics may be difficult to understand but whose results were easily seen. Operating a vehicle was nothing but an exercise in physics. The laws of force, mass, and acceleration all applied. And living was nothing but an exercise in the spiritual in which other laws such as the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, and the Sermon on the Mount were called into play. Following the Reasonable Directions would help keep you safe, whether on the road or in your life.

  So maybe it was appropriate that the first signpost of adulthood would involve getting a driver’s license. There was much wisdom to be found in that act. And as with all wisdom, you just had to dig a little to get it.

  I still remembered Chris’s list of Reasonable Directions. The first one was Be safe. There is a lot of danger in life. Some of it sits and waits for us to stumble upon it, and some of it is out there trying to find us.

  Another one was Keep it slow. We’re always in a hurry, aren’t we? Always trying to get somewhere to do something so we can go to another somewhere to do something else. Better to slow down. We miss too much by rushing along.

  What about Pay attention? Good advice for the drivers around here, since there are a lot of country roads with potholes and ditches. Don’t watch where you’re going and you’ll find yourself in the woods. Keep your mind on things that don’t really matter in life, and you’ll likely find yourself in the woods, too.

  Check your mirrors is also important. Since we tend to associate with those we share common traits and values with, the friends we have and the company we keep are mirrors of ourselves. So, too, are our children. They come into this world as blank slates, and for the first years parents are the ones who hold the chalk. What they become is often our own self-portrait, just miniaturized.

  Heed road signs to be aware of specific road rules—Stop, Yield, Merge—that if disobeyed will land you in front of a judge. But there are plenty in life, too. Warning us, helping us, keeping us safe. Heed them and all may not be well, but it would likely be better. A good thing to keep in mind, since we’ll all have to stand in front of the Judge one day.

 
; Never drive while impaired was most certainly a good idea. When driving, that means no alcohol or drugs. When living, that means no hate and fear. Because those things impair us, too.

  I was thinking about all this when the Mustang made its way back up the hill, fishtailing again. From a block away I saw that Chris must have come to his senses a bit since I had seen him last. He was probably going only thirty now instead of forty. I stepped into the middle of the road and waved my arms for him to stop.

  “Need a ride, dude?” he asked after he rolled down the passenger’s side window.

  “No, Chris, that’s okay. I value my life.”

  “Huh?” he said, not hearing me over his blaring radio.

  “No thanks!” I yelled.

  He fiddled with the knob and the music stopped. “Gotcha. Hey, what were you yelling at me when I passed you last time?”

  “I was telling you to slow down.”

  “Ah, come on. I got this,” he said through an I’m-ignorant-of-my-ignorance smile.

  “Chris, you have to stop acting like an idiot around here. You gotta be safe. You gotta slow down. Pay attention. Don’t you remember the Reasonable Directions? Act like you got some sense.”

  “I remember,” he said. “But when I get home after going out, I don’t wanna say, ‘Gee, that was nice.’ I wanna say, ‘Man, what a ride!’”

  I shook my head and sighed. Chris Davies. Sixteen years old, and he thought he was the indestructible, all-knowing, all-powerful master of his life.

  “Have a good walk, dude,” he said, laughing. “I’ll be sittin’ by the fire all nice and toasty by the time you get halfway home.”

  He threw the gearshift into first. “Don’t you remember the last Reasonable Direction?” He waved with a laugh and left in a cloud of exhaust.

  I thought for a moment and then smiled. His father had wanted to end things on a high note, because following Reasonable Directions isn’t designed to make things less fun, but to make us more happy. The last item on his father’s list was evidently Chris’s favorite.

  Enjoy the ride.

  As I kept walking, I couldn’t help but think he had a point. Life isn’t just about playing it safe all the time. Sometimes it is worth taking a risk. In life, maybe we all need to take a curve too quick sometimes, just to keep things interesting.

  Of all the things we long for in life, it was comfort we craved the most. Comfort was what had taken me to Super Mart for bread and milk. It was what Helen had gone to the park those many years ago to find. Kenny was going back to school to earn his family comfort, and Eugene was trying to buy it with that lottery ticket.

  And that was now what I was losing. I had followed the rules. All of them. I had kept my life slow and paid attention. I had checked my mirrors and watched for signs. But despite it all my comfort was being taken away. It was a theory we were all taught early in this world, but one that still baffled us each time it was proven true: sometimes you could do everything right and still have things turn out wrong.

  Some people would say that was life, and I supposed it was. But it was also God, I thought. Maybe God wasn’t as concerned about our comfort as we were. Maybe things like trust and faith meant more. Which was why He would allow us a little discomfort sometimes. We would hurt a little, yes. But we would learn more. We would learn that when the smooth road we’re driving upon ends at a cliff, He’ll be there to catch us. Knowing that seemed important to me. It was the difference between covering my face in fear and spreading my arms in anticipation.

  Enjoy the ride. Yes. That was my favorite rule, too. And one much easier to obey if I realized that pain had its purpose in my life. That the deeper it bored into my heart, the more room it made for joy later on.

  18

  Beary

  I walked through the front door expecting to hear the sweet silence of two napping children, but I was instead greeted by a living room in shambles and the television loud enough to rival a Metallica concert. Sara and Josh sat on the floor and feigned ignorance at the mess of toys and coloring books surrounding them. Not their fault, they promised. They had no idea how all of it had gotten there.

  The dining room, too, had been relegated to pigpen status since I’d left. Abby was busy washing clothes and had forgotten the cardinal rule of raising two small children—never turn your back for more than two minutes. Dolls, trucks, clothes, Legos, marbles, and dominoes were scattered over the dining room table. It looked as if Santa had arrived early and tripped on his way to the tree.

  I sighed and crept through the minefield of pointy action figures and Barbie supplies to the bedroom, where I searched the closet for my favorite sweatshirt. Comfort was key when it came to a day off, and if there was anything I needed, it was comfort.

  I explored through the shelves and hangers. Nothing. The next pass met with the same result. I even went through Abby’s side, knowing she had a propensity for lounging around the house in my shirts. Still nothing.

  A tinge of panic began to build until I saw a frayed gray sleeve poking out from the bottom of a pile of clothes on the top shelf. Yes! I reached up and pulled, expecting to free it without upsetting the delicate balance. And it almost worked. Halfway out, my sweatshirt decided to bring its friends along for the ride. As if I’d pulled a keystone, the entire contents of the shelf tumbled down and onto my head. The force of the cotton and denim, along with a few softballs I had forgotten about, buried me on the floor.

  “Help!” I called from beneath the pile. “Avalanche!”

  No answer.

  “Anybody?”

  Through the clothes I heard the muffled patter of tiny feet coming down the hallway, then an even more muffled, “Daddy?”

  “That you, Josh?”

  “Whatcha doin’, Daddy?”

  “I’m trying to get dressed.”

  “Try harder, Daddy.”

  “Thanks, buddy.”

  I rose up through the clothing like a monster out of the mire and did my best scary voice. Josh laughed and launched himself toward me, knocking me back into the pile, and then made a hasty exit before I could ask him to help straighten everything up.

  It didn’t take long to decide the top shelf was in fact the Bermuda Triangle of our closet. Things were put there and then lost for no apparent reason. I found a sweater Abby had given me back when she was just a girlfriend. I found another an aunt had bought me that I never managed to summon the courage to wear. There were T-shirts I hadn’t seen Abby wear in years and blue jeans that would never again fit me. It was a shocking and embarrassing moment—half of our closet was filled with things we never wore.

  I piled the clothes on the floor and walked into Josh’s room for comparison. His closet was smaller and crammed with so many clothes and stuffed animals that it was almost cartoonish. Sara’s was just as bad, filled with all sorts of things from clothes that no longer fit to games she no longer played to stuffed animals that wouldn’t even be accepted by Buzz and Woody.

  It was ridiculous, our excess. How could anyone possibly be happy with so much stuff?

  I gathered my family in the living room and made an executive decision. We had too many things, I announced. We should feel awful. There were plenty of people around town who hardly had anything to wear, and there we were with so many clothes that we could never wear them all. And the kids had so many toys that they had forgotten about half of them. Something had to be done, and we were going to do it. Today.

  “What toys?” asked Sara.

  “Your stuffed animals,” I said.

  “I like my stuffed animals!” protested Josh.

  “You can keep a few of them, but just a few. You don’t need them all, do you? You have your own private zoo in your closet.”

  He said nothing and bowed his head. It was an attempt either to entreat God to his defense or hide the tears puddling in his eyes. I wasn’t sure which it was, but I was sure I didn’t want to push the issue.

  “What are we gonna do with them?” Sara asked.<
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  “I’ll take them to the firehouse,” I told her. “They’ll give the clothes to the poor people and the stuffed animals to the children whose houses catch fire.”

  “Jesus loves the poor people,” said Josh, head still bowed.

  “He does,” I answered. “And He wants us to help them as much as we can.”

  The motion was seconded by Abby and carried by Josh. Sara abstained, choosing instead to sit on the sofa and stare out the window. I tried and failed to read the look on her face.

  I distributed one trash bag each to the kids, and Abby and I took two for ourselves. “Put in there whatever clothes or stuffed animals you don’t use,” I said. “I’ll take a look at them when you’re done.”

  Abby and I carried our bags to the closet, where we imposed an eight-month standard on all clothing. Anything not worn since the previous winter would be tossed into the bag and given away. It was a good theory in principle, but one that proved difficult in application. There was, for instance, a hat I really didn’t want to part with. Technically speaking, I hadn’t worn it in the past eight months. But as it had been caught in the Bermuda Triangle on the top shelf, that wasn’t my fault. If I would have known where it was, I surely would have worn it. And if I surely would have worn it, I couldn’t give it away. The logic was impeccable. There were also shirts that had likewise been forgotten but satisfied my tastes just fine, and three pairs of jeans that still fit.

  Abby had similar problems. She found a skirt that would fit just fine once she lost those nagging couple of pounds, a sweater she could not part with because a good memory had been woven into it, and so on.

  We agreed the eight-month rule was not a good one to apply to this particular situation. Better to just get rid of the things that were too worn or too ugly and spare ourselves the mental exhaustion of having to keep coming up with reasons why we needed to keep something.

  Our trash bags full, we ventured into Josh’s room to check on his progress. Since he was only three years of age, I was prepared to find anything. Anything except actual clothes and stuffed animals inside his trash bag.