Little Reminders

[Kathleen Helms]

Eleven cents at a time

When I was little, Mom taught me the old rhyme “find a penny, pick it up, all day long you’ll have good luck. Find a penny, let it lie, all good luck will pass you by.” Well, from that point onward, I couldn’t ignore a penny on the ground!

When Sam died (July 10, 1999) we started finding pennies. It started the day he died.

About a month or so after, my sister sent me a story about how pennies are dropped from Heaven to say hello and I’m thinking about you. Now on the face of it, you might point out that people find pennies all over the place. Lots of people drop change while trying to slip it into a pocket, it falls out of the crack in the bottom of your change purse or whatever. True, and undisputed.

But the sheer number of pennies found, and the ways (and places) in which they’re found, convinced me, Missy and my Mom that Sam was saying hello. Others in the family have come to believe it too. Jeannie finds them in Washington. Anna finds them. Maggie and Amanda as well.

When you get out of your car and go in a store and then come back to find a shiny penny laying on your dash where you know for a fact no penny laid before, you start to believe! How about one propped on the top of the steering wheel? Absolutely no way it could have fallen out of a pocket to land there. Check into a hotel and there’s a penny on the pillow. I can’t count the number of times we’ve done something like get in the car and there on the seat waiting for us is a penny. Walk down the stairs on Mother’s Day and right smack dab in the middle of the second stair is a shiny 1999 penny. (I saved that one and laminated it. I consider it Sammy’s mother’s day present to me that year.)

Missy was 4 (going on 5 later in the year) when Sam died. In utter innocence one day (when between the three of us in the course of running errands together we found 33 cents one penny at a time), Missy asked my Mom “Grandma what happens when you die someday? How will we know if the pennies are from you or Sammy?” I was mortified at the blunt question, but Mom shrugged it off. “I’m not going anywhere for a long time,” she said. “But when I do, I won’t drop pennies. I’ll drop dimes. That’s how you’ll know it’s me.” I joked and said “I’d rather you dropped dollar bills. No, make that 20 dollar bills.” Mom whacked me in the arm and that was that.

The day of Mom’s funeral, I went out to get in the car. As I opened my door, there on the seat was a dime. I’ll be honest and admit that in my grief, I didn’t associate the dime with Mom at the time. I was too busy trying not to fall apart to think about it. I found the dime, I picked it up and dropped it in my clutch purse. It fell amongst the pile of kleenex and laid there to be rediscovered a few days later.

A short time passed and Anna (my oldest daughter) called to report a strange happening. Josh had come to her with a dime he’d found. Anna told him to put the dime in his bank, he could have it since he found it. He said “no Mommy, dimes are for Mommy, the lady said so.” Conversation ensued wherein Josh insisted that the lady — who was right there — was giving him dimes and telling him that they were for his Mommy. He explained that the lady was “your grandma. Not my grandma, who lives in Ohio.” (Josh was very disturbed by Mom’s death because Anna kept calling her “grandma” and he kept freaking out that it was HIS grandma [me] who had died. To this day if Anna says something about Mom, Josh clarifies it with “that’s your grandma, right?”)

When Anna relayed the story to me, I told her about Mom’s promise to drop dimes. Well, dimes started popping up everywhere for Anna. They were popping up everywhere for us, too, and more often than not, they’re accompanied by pennies.

We went to The Beach waterpark August 27 (along with Amanda, Tim and Caleb), trying to squeeze in as many days as we could before they shut down the pools and slides for the season. Upon getting in the car, we found a penny and a dime laying on the floor mat. “Hi Mom. Hi Sammy,” I said. Missy chimed in with hellos. The day was on the edge of overcast, but it became a little brighter with eleven cents.

We got to the park and went to put our stuff on chaise lounges and headed for the warm water pool. When I returned to the chairs briefly to put my pony tail holder in the bag, there laid a dime in the middle of my towel. As I unzipped the bag, I noticed a penny laying on the ground beside it. I wondered if I had dropped the eleven cents we’d found in the car — I thought I’d put it in the cup holder in the car, but maybe I hadn’t. (Later, when we left, I checked and it was in the cup holder.) I might point out that the park was empty. There might have been 50 people there (total) all day. The bulk of the slides were closed (you don’t want to be five stories up on a water slide if lightning strikes!) but it was awesome to pretty much have the place to ourselves.

We went down to the concession area to get some burgers and sodas later in the day during a brief set of showers. While Amanda and I waited for the food, Missy went to get a table with Tim and Caleb trailing behind her. As she went to put the stuff on the table, she found a penny with a dime on top of it. Did I mention that the park was virtually empty? Who had left eleven cents laying there? When the rain stopped and we went back to the pool, we put that eleven cents with the other.

Today, I came downstairs to start my day. I know exactly what was on my desk when I went to bed. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there wasn’t eleven cents laying on my keyboard — which was in the tray, slid under the desk, no less. I was the first person down here today, so it wasn’t Darin or Missy who left it. I seriously doubt any of the dogs did it. And I’m pretty confident in saying the hamsters (and the gerbil) didn’t either.

I found a penny today
Just laying on the ground
But it’s not just a penny
This little coin I’ve found.

Found pennies come from Heaven
That’s what my Grandpa told me,
He said, “Angels toss them down.”
Oh, how I loved that story.

He said, “When an angel misses you
They toss a penny down,
Sometimes just to cheer you up
To make a smile out of your frown.”

We all have angels looking over us,
no matter how young or old we might be.
Maybe that penny laying on the floor
was put there specially.

So don’t pass by that penny
When you’re feeling blue,
It may be a penny from Heaven
That an Angel tossed to you.