The Eight-Penny Bracelet
By Grant F.C. Gillard
Copyright 2013 Grant F.C. Gillard
The old farmhouse sat vacant for ten years since mother passed in 1998. She was an obstinate old woman, insisting on staying in that drafty, outmoded dwelling after dad died in 1981. She was adamant, refusing to leave the only home where she raised us five children. When dad died at the too-young age of seventy-four, we had no idea mom had so many good years ahead of her. My eldest sibling, Ruth, eventually moved mom into her home in Poplar Bluff for that last year of her life following the massive stroke that left her confined to a wheel chair.
But mom didn’t go without raising a fuss, her words, garbled by the affects of the stroke, spoke plainly of her contentious objection. She had proclaimed, in those early years after losing dad, how they married for better and for worse; how they survived the Great Depression, the droughts of ’37, ’43 and ’57, not to mention the years when milk prices bottomed out in 1963. When she finally relented in renting out the cropland to Elmer Bogenstein, she insisted on negotiating the lease, though acquiesced to having it approved by our lawyer. She was a walking historian of everything that happened on the farm, which was everything that happened to her.
In the last ten years the vacant farmhouse fell victim to the attrition of us children as we began to cherry-pick the family heirlooms and move out the well-worn, lesser-valued furniture for the college-bound grandchildren. There wasn’t much left after all those years, but now my siblings numbered two, having lost Harvey in a New Year’s Eve car wreck in 2001 and my sister, Lois to a sudden heart attack in 2006. We three remaining children finally embraced our impending loss, summoned the courage to sell the farm and the flood of memories with it, and move on with our respective lives. It was time. We reluctantly made plans to gather one last time to box up the old odds and ends, haul what battered furniture remained to the thrift store, and list the property with Ted Morrison, one of my high school buddies who never left town and had done quite well selling real estate. I still had no idea of what I was going to do with the money, my mind continuing to deny, even refusing to accept the reality of what inevitability awaited every family, sooner or later.
The floor still creaked familiarly at the bottom of the steps and the kitchen cupboards clung to the lingering aroma of pot roast and mashed potatoes. The indentations from where the upright piano used to sit recessed the faded beige carpet. I wished now I had kept up my piano lessons. Large cardboard, storage boxes lined the wall in the living room. There wasn’t much point in sorting anything as it all had to go, and there wasn’t much left, anyway. We sifted our memories with every visit and gleaned that which we valued. The storage boxes were just glorified trash cans.
I decided to start in the living room, beginning at the old book case and moving clockwise around the room, a house-cleaning trick my wife taught me in the early days of our marriage when my spousal responsibilities were severely lacking. Dust was everywhere and no matter how gently I placed items into the boxes, each handful lifted lazy plumes of dust into my face and nostrils. My tongue tasted decades-old history as I inadvertently licked my lips, the corners of my mouth beginning to feel gritty. I wiped my mouth with my thumb and forefinger, but wondered if I didn’t just smear as much dust on as I took off. I was definitely going to need a shower. Dust mites danced in the sunbeams that managed to filter through dingy windows that once graced my great-grandmother’s, hand-made, lace curtains.
Ruth emerged from the bedroom, “Hey, look at this,” she said excitedly. She held in her hands a small, wood box about three inches square and maybe an inch high. “I found this in the bottom of Mom’s old dresser behind the drawer. It must have fallen out a long time ago. I can’t remember ever seeing this.”
Opening the box, she extracted a small charm bracelet. It appeared to be an inexpensive copper bracelet with darkened pennies dangling as charms. “And they’re all wheat pennies, too!” she said with added enthusiasm.
She handed me the bracelet. Each penny had a tiny, barely visible hole drilled right above Abe Lincoln’s scalp. A finely twisted wire affixed each penny to the bracelet. It was plain, but very artistic, obviously made by a local jeweler.
“Well, I doubt with this hole drilled into them they’ve retained any value,” I added. I rubbed the date on one of the pennies to sharpen my vision. “Here’s one from 1948. Hey, that’s as old as I am! And here’s one from 1936 and 1938.”
I fumbled past two, badly oxidized 1943 zinc pennies nestled together on the bracelet, “steelies” as some coin collectors called them.
“Is there one from 1952?” my youngest sister, Barb, asked.
“Yes,” I responded, moving, again, along the line of consecutively dated coins. I counted eight pennies around that bracelet. We fell silent, all three of us coming to the same, unspoken conclusion. “These are all of our birth years,” I said solemnly. “The first one here is 1936. That would have been mom’s first child, Albert. He died at age three from small pox. Here’s a 1938 penny. That would be you, Ruth, and here’s Harvey at 1941.”
My voice broke and I fought back a swell of emotion. The two steelies from 1943 were my twin siblings who died in childbirth. Their simple graves in the family plot are simply designated “Baby girl” and Baby boy,” my parents so overwhelmed with grief they could never give them proper names, nor were they ever mentioned except when we decorated the graves on Memorial Day weekend with mom’s peonies. My spirits lifted as I remembered how mother would fuss incessantly every spring hoping the fickle weather would finally settle so her peonies would bloom in time for what she called, “Decoration Day.” It was always my job to balance the mason jars on my lap as I rode in the front seat of that old Buick she used to drive. The vinyl always made my thighs sweat so bad I’d stick to the seat.
I cleared my throat and batted back tears. “Here’s Lois in 1947. Me in 1948 and Barb, here’s you in 1952.” We stood silently, not knowing what to say. I held in my hand the tokens of my mother’s eight children, five she would watch grow into adulthood and the three she would always carry in her heart.
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