Persistence of Memory

My mother made me believe from an early age that there were riches undiscovered in small change. She collected coins - as in they would come her way through everyday commerce and rather than having them move on to the next person, she would put them into piggy banks. This was one of her ways of saving money. 

Mom believed there was always the prospect that a coin both valuable and rare would find its way into pocket change. If all else failed, time would turn those thin disks of copper and silver (before 1968) into wealth untold.

In 1973, just before we moved to Trenton from our home in Edmonton, I helped mom and dad impose order on the chaos of collected coins in the house. They dumped banks full of pennies onto a card table set up in the living room and we counted and rolled, counted and rolled - sorting the pennies by the year they were minted - for what seemed like hours. 

I surprised both my parents and myself by how engrossing I found this task. They beguiled the tedium by discussing politics. And as I turned the messy piles of pennies into tidy, uniform rolls, I absorbed every word, my concentration perfectly split between their conversation and my counting to fifty.

Many years later, after Mom died, my sisters and I found some of those rolls of pennies, about fifteen dollars' worth, in a box. I took possession of the pennies and promised my sisters I would take them to someone who could tell us if there was treasure buried there.

Turns out not. Just 30 rolls of pennies that were worth quite a lot more when they were rolled than when we found them.

Nowadays banks and grocery stores have machines that will sort loose change. But I still roll my own, an idle pass time that masquerades as being productive. When I do roll the loose change that accumulates in a small dish in our home office, the trace of the memory of my parents' long ago conversation bubbles forward and I will find myself musing about present day politics. 

It's a small irony that the federal government has discontinued the penny.

The photo is of one of my mother's piggy banks. I didn't keep the pennies, but I kept one of her treasure rooms. 

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Karen