Lucky Penny

I walk, gently tugging on the string of pearls that hangs around my neck. The sun is warm but the air is not, and I wonder if I should have worn a thicker sweater. I drop the pearls in favor of tucking my hands into my sleeves and brace against the chill of a passing breeze. Head down, I notice the glint of something shiny on the sidewalk. It brings me to a stop and I backtrack slightly to investigate. The sun is reflecting off of a single penny. I stoop to pick it up and Lincoln winks at me, seeming to make a promise with my discovery. I grin, slipping the penny into the side of my shoe for safekeeping.

Spare change could be found everywhere in the days after my grandmother passed away. I was fresh grief in pigtails and size-four shoes, desperate to believe a woman I adored had not left me. Inside my head I flipped over and over through the images I kept of her, committing to memory all that she was to me. Many times in those photographs I saw her handing me a dollar. It was always so perfectly creased into a rectangle, so easily slipped into one little hand while the other was occupied by a homemade cookie. I collected these perfectly folded dollars just as my grandmother intended, until I had enough to buy something good. But Toys-R-Us did not sell anything better than the memory of my grandmother, so I stashed away the dollars to perpetually remain in their perfect little folds. My grandmother could not truely leave me if I still had her money, after all. So when the funeral was approaching and everyone in my family started finding carefully placed handfuls of change wherever they went, each of us readily denied the ideas of coincidence or chance. I, for one, was absolutely convinced that we were finding pennies directly from Heaven. In the theme of her dollars, my grandmother was gifting pockets of change. On one of those occasions, I was walking near the front entrance of the restaurant at which my family and I frequented for pizza. My brother and cousin spotted a couple of candy machines, and I ran up to them while the boys instantly began plotting how they could ask our parents for quarters. When I reached the machines, a few things instantly piqued my attention: one contained M&Ms, the top surface of its container was a bright red, and on it sat a handful of coins.

I think of the penny that now rests in my shoe, letting it remind me of the time when a bit of money meant the world to me. It has been quite some time since I lost my grandmother. But I suppose a part of me is lingering grief in blue jeans, tucking away pennies like they will add up to lost time. Then I continue walking, a bit quicker this time as if to beat the air’s chill and regain the sun’s warmth.

Winter 2021