The Dime Story 

I have a saltshaker recently repurposed for collections of small things, like feathers found, colorful rocks, and bits of glass. The shaker, constantly clogging in the humidity of my new home, was too pretty to cast aside in a dark corner of the kitchen cabinet. I did that at first because I was frustrated with it for not doing the job it was made to do.

But then I saw its beauty. Sometimes that happens when you least expect it.

I’d found an older home needing lots of attention and was fortunate in the months that followed to discover many left-behind things.

As I raked, my heart would jump when bugs and copperheads took off for less undisturbed habitats. While cleaning and scrubbing and moving old bookcases and dressers, there were less scary finds like dimes and pennies and old tiles painted like mushrooms.

I sent the dimes to my brother; he collects them in a memorial garden by his home. Our dad loved to tell his “dime story,” a season in his 1930s childhood when his Scranton, Pennsylvania mom would send him a dime for Christmas.

Dad said he spent all day in Philadelphia, where he was living and educated, figuring out where he would spend that dime. Now that he’s gone, we “kids” figure when we find a dime, it’s Dad out there telling us he’s thinking about us.

And we think of him as that little boy in the big city looking for the best buy for his dime. I think he told us he bought a toy that quickly broke.

After my dad died, my sister sent me our Dad’s leather briefcase his brother had bought him in London. Old, cracked, and weathered after all these decades, I took it proudly and humbly with me to work, filling it with stories I was writing about my dad.

There never seems to be enough time to write all the ideas that come to mind, but, like my dad, I keep a tablet and pen by my bedside, on my couch, at the kitchen table, on my desk; and a running tablet inside my heart where I can capture the moment before it passes.