The Quarter Map
Mom leaves me pennies. I’ve found hundreds of them since she died two years ago, but that’s a story for another day. Now Dad, he leaves me quarters — not as often as Mom, but I know they are from him. In fact, I found one in the grass today.
The first quarter I found was the day after Dad’s funeral. Walking with a busy crowd on State Street, it called my name. I picked it up and put it in a special place in my wallet. I don’t know how to explain it, but I knew it was from him.
Toward the end, right before Mom and Dad died, I found Dad at the dining room table looking at this cardboard map of the United States — each state had a cutout for its own commemorative quarter. Apparently, he had collected them over the years, and carefully put them in their proper place.
He showed it to me and told me it was “worth something” — doing the math, I silently figured it was worth about 25 cents times 50. Dad wanted me to know it was there — you know, after he was gone. He was frustrated though, since there was one quarter missing.
It made me sad. Besides the fact that they were both dying, my dad’s life had come to this — sitting at a table rummaging through quarters completing this silly map. I felt like a piece-of-shit daughter too, because I knew that I had a coffee can filled with change at home, and I should be sitting down with him, finding that…
