The other day on my way home from school I stopped at a convenience store to get a dollar hotdog for lunch. As I approached the entrance to the store, a brief glint, dull and with a reddish color, caught my eye, drawing my attention–if only for a moment–away from the delicious hotdog awaiting me in the store. A penny was on the ground. Though the purchase power of smallest denomination of US currency is minimal in these times, a penny (to me) is still worth more than the energy I would expend by kneeling down to collect it, so I postponed my hunger for a few moments to pick up the little guy.
With my attention now on the hot cement outside the convenience store, I noticed that my orphaned penny had three brothers with him. How odd, I thought, to find four pennies at once. While finding a penny or two is not uncommon, finding four is indeed very uncommon. I collected the four brothers and gave them a new home in my pocket. I reoriented myself on my hunger destruction mission and entered the store, hotdogs on my mind. While pouring my drink, I thought about the pennies. Only one time before can I remember finding four pennies at once… and that was a decade and a half ago.
"Four Cents" by flickr user JeremyBrooks
Both my Mom and my Dad had a goal to complete a College degree. In the economy of the mid-to-late eighties, raising a family was hard, not to mention trying to go to school at the same time. They each worked hard, my Mom worked full-time to pay most of the bills and then cared for the kids while my Dad worked part time jobs and went to school. He flunked out of university courses, due to a mix of his long aversion to traditional education and the strain of juggling life with school. He found a second chance at a private alternative university, a new thing in those days. My mom was concerned that a degree from an institution like his wouldn’t count in the real world, but they were assured to the contrary, and essentially lied to. Bachelor’s degree in hand, he couldn’t find a job in his field. Dad went back to an hourly assistant manager job at a restaurant and did small-time home-based work on the side. His break would come, but it would take a few years, and in the meanwhile we kids looked forward to his Monday and Tuesday days off.
1993 was host one of the hottest summers ever. It was so hot that the airport was closed down because the air safety controllers were unsure about the safety of flying jumbo jets in 120 degree and greater heat. People stayed indoors, including the kids of the Scott clan. We likely drove mom crazy. One Monday morning that summer, Dad awoke us before sunrise and instructed us to get dressed… in jeans. We protested, I am sure, probably whining that it would be too hot for jean. We didn’t know that, where we were going, we needed jeans.
My Dad’s spontaneity (or impulsiveness–depending on who you ask) made my childhood exciting. Days like this, where we’d pack up and go somewhere without warning, occurred with regularity. We’d sometimes be gone, without warning, for days. During my early teens, my friends couldn’t understand how we could do that, but I’d make the same statements of their rigid school, sports, and karate schedule instead. This spontaneous day trip was before those more complicated times, though, and is actually one of the first I have memories of. This day, we got in the car headed the mountains where the air was cooler and my siblings and I needed jeans, to a town with a funny name in high country of Arizona, where the heat was less and the air was fresh.
I fell asleep in the car, and in the hour or so we drove, the sun rose. I remember us stopping for gas, and my groggily asking, “are we there yet?”, only to fall back asleep before the answer was given. We arrived in the town with the funny name and had breakfast. “Where are we dad?”, we’d ask. “Strawberry!”, he’d reply, and then we kids would giggle. I don’t remember much more of that day, except what happened right after breakfast.
Shortly after we left the restaurant, while still in the parking lot, my brother found a penny. Keeping in mind how I feel about pennies today, imagine how big it was to find a penny as a seven-year-old kid! My feelings of envy were short-lived, because just left of his shoe was a second penny, and this one was mine. Careful not tip him off, I dove down for it, and bounced back with my own penny. Now both of us were cheering. My four year-old sister started walking in circles around the parking lot, obviously looking for her own. Dad suggested we help her.
By now, my Mom and baby sister, who had fallen behind the rest of the pack, made their way to the parking lot. Upon being told what all the commotion was about, baby sister and mom joined in the treasure hunt. Sure enough, my middle sister found her penny. And she too cheered. Though only two, baby sister wanted in on the fun. While I doubt she understood the value of a penny (ha, like I really did at that time too!), to her it was likely even more important to find a penny too, just so she could join the not-so-elusive club of lucky Scott kids who found pennies that morning. Moments later, my Dad called baby sister over to where he was standing, and pointed out a fourth penny.
Prizes in hand, we loaded into the car.
By now my soda is overflowing. As I put a cap on the drink, a smile crossed my face. Not because of a happy memory, though happy it is indeed, but because 14 years gave me a new perspective on that memory. I realized that it was very unlikely that four pennies were on the ground that day. There were only two on the ground when our family arrived for our unexpected treasure hunt, but by the time we left, four had been recovered. It wasn’t luck. It wasn’t magic. Those last two pennies made their way onto the asphalt for my two sisters to find because of love, because, to my dad, the joys of his children we far more valuable than the pennies weighing down my father’s pocket.
Today it has been over a year since I have seen my Dad. It has been even longer than that since I have known him. His body now is like a spoilt onion, each layer more disgusting than the next. Though his body still walks the earth, his blood still flows through the veins, and his shell still identifies itself with the same name, the being that was my dad has been long gone. No pennies would it drop for me.
I hold out hope though, at least for his salvation, at most for a chance to thank him and love him once more. I know that underneath the façade of lies that disguises his illness—his addictions—and its disgusting symptoms, inside his shell, hiding in the shadow of his overwhelming ego, is a bruised and battered soul; a soul that is lost, a soul that is hurting, a soul that loves me still. As the shell comes to term with its mortality, and its demons come to term with their fates, I pray that his soul finds peace. I hold out hope, the long shot that it is, that before its too late, that the illness is cured—and not in remission because it has come back before—so that the lies are no longer needed and that the ego will step aside and the soul will heal and retake its role of head of household for his body, and that my dad will be here. And I’d have many, many pennies for him.