I was four. I don’t know if I lived in Gamber Apartments or the one on the Pennsylvania line. Maybe it was when we lived in the apartment below my Aunt, in an old split-level house. It doesn’t matter, but also I am very cognizant this will be picked apart with a fine-tooth comb so I am trying to get the details right. Some of the exact specifics I might have misremembered. But it is what I believe to be true to the best of my knowledge.
So. When I was four, I stood in the space between my mother’s bed and dresser, regardless of where that geographical location may have been. My mother sat on the bed wearing one of those shirts that are made like swimsuits, so you never have to worry about plumbers’ crack. Her dark roots had grown out, betraying her box dye blonde tresses. Poor mother. Decades later dark roots would be a coveted look, but by 90’s fashion standards, this was just a visible symbol of the consequences of neglect.
On my tippy toes I could see my nose and a swirl of curly blonde hair staring back at me from the mirror on top of the dresser.
“This brown one? This is a penny!” My mother said, sliding a coin over for my inspection.
My mother, like all people, wasn’t all bad. She attended nearly every school recital, cheering the very loudest, much to our embarrassment. She would chaperone field trips, reveling in the attention for being the “young, cool mom”. She loved bringing in cupcakes and having a hall monitor tell her to get back to class. Being young, and exactly 4’11” and a half, it was a game she never grew tired of. I believe she truly did enjoy being a good mom. I believe she enjoyed it even more when there was an audience to commend her for being that good mom.
I couldn’t wait to grow up to be as cool as she was. To toss my hair, laughing at the disbelief on strangers faces as they processed how I, too, could both look so young and beautiful and also have four children.
“They’re all yours?” came the familiar question.
“Only until they’re 18,” she would joke and everyone in the vicinity would get a good chuckle. I always laughed too. Maybe a little less joyfully as the years went by. Each year making the fact my beautiful young mother was even capable of birthing a child as old as I more impressive to strangers. My mother basked in the attention like a lizard in the sun.
“A quarter!” She sang the words as she lined up the biggest coin next to the brown one. “Okay now tell me. What is this one called?”
“Penny!” I searched her face for confirmation.
“And this?”
“Quarter!” My mother was proud that when I began headstart that fall, I would already know my alphabet, sight words, and even coins. She took delight in my correct answers, each validating her as the best mother in the world. Certainly a better mother than she had growing up, she’d remind us. I was a fast learner naturally, but I also heard my mother bragging when I “was smart” and I wasn’t going to let her down.
“Do you know this one?” I looked at the new coin. So small next to the quarter. So small you might miss it in a pocketful of change. Not the first coin you’d reach for. So small you would never think that this tiny, shiny circle with its ridged sides could ever be capable of hurting anything. That would be absurd.
She continued before I could answer. “This one is called a dime, see? Look at the man on the coin! It looks JUST like your Granddad Thomas. See the face here? So now every time you see a dime you can remember your Granddad.”
She gleefully patted herself on the back for imparting this wisdom, confident that I was exactly old enough to remember coins and colors but have no long-term memory of our dishes smashing angerly into walls leaving sharp shrapnel minefields.
Too little to remember the scary screaming matches I overheard even from my hiding spot.
Even with my fingers pushed deep in my ears.
Even when I zipped myself all the way inside of my Rainbow Brite sleeping bag, head and all.
“This is the Granddad coin! See? Now this will be one you’ll never forget!”
She was right.
Photo by Todd Trapani
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