A Different Penny Story

Last week after posting about pennies, I thought this penny story needed to be shared. 

My friend Cindy feels that when someone close to you dies, they remind you they are still out there, still watching you, by dropping a white feather in your path. It has happened to her many times in her life, especially when she has been thinking or talking about someone who has gone on and while you may roll your eyes and chalk it up to coincidence, it gives Cindy a measure of comfort and sweet memory.

I've had a white feather incident once or twice in recent years, but not so much that I look for white feathers. I have no problem embracing the idea that the line between us the living and them the dead is a fine one indeed, the sheerest of curtains, the briefest of breaths. I just am perhaps not as aware or tuned into that other world. 

It amuses me writing that last line, given my close tenancy with Death, who has yet to evict me. Maybe I need to be pay more attention. And maybe I am paying more attention than I think. Hence my penny story.

Earlier this week I came across two shoeboxes of photos from Aunt Ginger's stash. I had gone through many of her photos back in 2017, when I moved her from her apartment to assisted living. These were boxes I had not gotten to and then misplaced. I am now going through those boxes slowly, again thinking of which photos to pass on to my cousins or my brothers, which to throw away because they have no connection to any of us in the family.

In doing so, I came across this photo, with 1958 penciled in Ginger's hand on the back of it:

I know that room, I know that life. The little girl, looking fearful almost, is me. Judging my size and what I am wearing, I suspect this is autumn of 1958 and I would have been two and a half years old. The woman I am leaning against, who has reached back to hold me close, is my grandmother Skatzes. She would have been 65 years old in 1958, the age I am now. I do not remember her hair still having color to it, nor her ever wearing anything less than a full bib apron (she always wore an apron), but after over six decades, I am sure there are other very young impressions that have been replaced by my impression when I was older.

We are in the living room of the house on Flax Street, the house my grandfather, probably with the help of his father, built, the house my mother was born in, the house I lived in until I was 14. The teapot on the gas stove (the house had no central heat) was Grandma's way of keeping some moisture in the air. Every stove in the house had a teapot on it for that very purpose. The bric-a-brac corner shelf on the wall would have been my grandfather's work; for all the evil he brought to the family, he was a skillful woodworker whose pieces decorated our homes.

That was on Tuesday. On Thursday, taking a long, long walk, I crossed the river (one of the visible and invisible dividing lines in this community) and walked around the East side, looping over the street that would carry me down the hill and around the corner to the intersection of Flax and Carlisle. My grandparents' house sits at that T-intersection on the northeast corner. I walked by the house, glancing up at the windows. I then looked down as I made ready to cross Flax. And there, in the middle of the intersection where Carlisle tees into Flax, was this:

Of course I picked it up and carried it home.

Pennies from heaven? A hug from my grandmother? Just a stray coin? 

Or maybe all of the above.