{"id":4543,"date":"2015-07-23T22:30:09","date_gmt":"2015-07-23T22:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lisaschnellinger.com\/?p=4543"},"modified":"2019-05-15T13:48:04","modified_gmt":"2019-05-15T17:48:04","slug":"day-17-pennies-from-dad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/?p=4543","title":{"rendered":"Day 17: Pennies from Dad"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve had a struggle the past few days with a tooth that’s gone bad and is throbbing with pain. I’m facing a huge dental bill that will wipe out my entire health savings account.<\/p>\n

This was making me feel poor and helpless and old, though I am not any of those things. I was just in pain, feeling sorry for myself and very vulnerable.<\/p>\n

I was not in the mood to read the drivel of\u00a0email before my 8 a.m. team call, so I decided to sort pennies. I thought it would be cool to see what’s just laying around the house.<\/p>\n

I took the lid off of the teacup where we throw loose change, and was astonished by the coin just sitting right on top in the middle:<\/p>\n

\"coin<\/a><\/p>\n

Yep, a 1943 steel wheat penny. Not in great shape, but it was so obvious that I cannot believe I hadn’t noticed it.<\/p>\n

My dad was in England in 1943, in the middle of World War II, and he is always the first person I think of when WWII comes up. So it was like he’d flipped me a coin, right at the top of the heap so I wouldn’t miss it. “Thanks Dad,” I said, grinning.<\/p>\n

I dumped the jar onto the table, and started putting the quarters, dimes and nickels back in. Along the way I found two coins that I didn’t even know existed: a Jefferson dollar<\/a>, and a beautiful Jefferson nickel from the Westward Journey Nickel Series<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Jefferson<\/a> \"2005<\/a><\/p>\n

Then I was left with a pile of pennies, about 100 I guess.<\/p>\n

I was still admiring that 1943 steel penny when I picked up the first penny from the pile.<\/p>\n

It was a 2010.<\/p>\n

Yesterday<\/a> I asked my Dad to drop a 2010 penny in my path – and two came along immediately. But I’d given him a specific date, August 11, his birthday, when I expected to find that 2010.<\/p>\n

Still, I smiled at the coincidence of a 2010 being the first one from the pile. I reached for another.<\/p>\n

It was a 2010.<\/p>\n

\"Day<\/a><\/p>\n

I got a chill, at that. Until I asked for a 2010 penny from Dad, I’d only found two 2010s out of hundreds of pennies I had sorted.<\/p>\n

I carefully set the second 2010 alongside the first. And picked up a third.<\/p>\n

It was a 2010.<\/p>\n

Now I was weeping, with Dad at my shoulder, his reassuring presence, and I felt the full force of how much I miss him. That was so Dad: patiently putting one coin after another in front of me, to be sure I could not possibly rule out that\u00a0this was him.<\/p>\n

I could hear his voice\u00a0trying to tell me:\u00a0“I would never leave my little girl undefended. Or poor.”<\/p>\n

Eventually, I wiped my tears and drew again. I got a 2009, another one that’s been very rare in my sorting (it was something of a collector’s item because of the four different reverse designs). This was the one with Lincoln reading.<\/p>\n

\"2009<\/a><\/p>\n

I laughed and said, “Thanks Dad.” The image of reading reminded me of Mom, and I said, “Hey Mom, haven’t heard from you – you need to get in the game.”<\/p>\n

I drew a 2007 penny – the year of her death.<\/p>\n

And then another one.<\/p>\n

In the next ten pennies I got a third 2007. In the next set, two more 2010s. And then a fourth 2007. And another 2009. All this out of a small pile of random coins that had been sitting in a jar, waiting for me.<\/p>\n

\"2007<\/a><\/p>\n

I sat and looked at those three piles: 5 from 2010, 4 from 2007, two from 2009. I thought about the spirits of my mom and dad, out there in the universe, having a good time, taking care of things, taking care of me.<\/p>\n

I felt better than I have all week.<\/p>\n

We can talk about math, and statistical probability, and coincidence. We can talk about reason and logic and laws of science. We can talk about anything you like.<\/p>\n

But I know what I know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve had a struggle the past few days with a tooth that’s gone bad and is throbbing with pain. I’m facing a huge dental bill that will wipe out my entire health savings account. This was making me feel poor and helpless and old, though I am not any of those things. I was just … read more Day 17: Pennies from Dad<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4789,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15,16,18,19,17,8,11,7,12,9,10,75,13,14],"class_list":["post-4543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-pennies","tag-15","tag-16","tag-18","tag-19","tag-17","tag-dad","tag-dollar","tag-heaven","tag-jefferson","tag-mom","tag-nickel","tag-spirit","tag-steel","tag-wheat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4543"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4937,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4543\/revisions\/4937"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lisaschnellinger.com\/pennies\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}