Lucky Pennies

Little known fact about me, I collect lucky pennies. It was something I started after I moved out of our home and I’m not sure why. Maybe I felt I needed all the luck I could get, maybe it was because I was anxious about being my sole source of financial support, or maybe it was because for the first time in 16 years, I began to notice things around me in this big world of ours. When you’re wrapped up in work, raising kids, paying bills, keeping the house clean, and trying to get a marriage on track, that well, let’s face it, was never on track to begin with, you don’t notice much beyond the periphery of your circumstances. When the first real test of our marriage came 10 years ago, I reacted by staying in bed, in the same pajamas, for three days straight. I was a stay at home mom so I would get up when Kelly needed me, but as soon as I’d get him settled, back to bed I went. It got ugly toward the end, figuratively and literally. I’m sure I would have stayed there longer, in those red plaid flannel pajamas, listening to the Williams Brothers “Can’t Cry Hard Enough” were it not for a small miracle (and yes, I realize how pathetic taking to one’s bed to listen to sappy music on repeat sounds). On the third day of my self-imposed exile from life, Kelly wasn’t having any of it anymore and insisted on moving us to the living room in his one-year-old way. So I took to the couch while he walked around the coffee table over and over again, a practice he had recently started. Lying there, I contemplated moving back into the bedroom. We had baby gates and there wasn’t really anything he could get into. I wasn’t sleeping during that three day stint of Tennessee Williamsesqe depression so I knew I’d hear if he was in trouble…but then it happened, a small miracle that broke me out of the small world of my heartbreak: Kelly took his first steps. He had been leaning against to coffee table watching Arthur when he let go of the table and just walked over to the TV. Once he got to the TV, he must have realized he had done something pretty amazing because he turned around and smiled a smile at me that said “check me out, look at what I just did!” Had I moved back into the bedroom, I would have missed one of the most amazing experiences I’ve had as a parent. I’d like to think that was a lucky penny moment, a moment in which my heart was quiet enough to notice the amazing things going on around me in this world that really is so much bigger than I am. So maybe I collect lucky pennies because I feel like I can use all the luck I can get these days, or maybe it is a type of financial security (albeit a pretty poor type if that’s the case, just sayin), but today I choose to believe it’s because my heart if quiet enough these days to notice the lucky pennies when they appear.