Pennies, Nickels, Dimes and Quarters

Pat Liberty

Better late than never. This week I switched to one of my winter handbags. Transferring things from one bag to another, I mused on the junk we women carry around with us: wallet, lipstick, Chapstick, business cards, pens and pencils, used tissues, a couple of Epi-pens just in case, and keys to this and that. (I’ve always had all my keys on one ring because I’m not organized enough to keep track of more than one key ring) It’s a mish-mash of stuff that ends up in a pack-your-clothes-for-a -week handbag. When most of the stuff is moved from one bag to another, I turn the summer bag upside down and shake it. A few coins fall out: pennies, nickels and dimes with a couple quarters bringing up the rear.

It occurred to me that life is paid out in pennies, nickels and sometimes dimes or quarters. Sometimes we choose how much we spend and where. With as much wisdom and intention as we can muster, we decide where to pay out the coins of our life and time. Other times those decisions seem to be made for us by the eclipse of time, changing relationships or just plain chance. Life can change in a heartbeat, and where we dribble out the coins of our life changes in response.

Years of working for Hospice taught me a lot about how people dribble out the coins of their lives. Sometimes the coin supply is running low and won’t be replenished because the show is just about over. Some people want a rewind so they can go back and do it all over again because it was so much fun. Some people want a refund because it wasn’t so hot, and they’d like a chance to fix it. Either way, we only get one chance to dribble our coins away in this life.

And if we do it mostly kind of right, it is enough.

I gathered up the change that fell out on the bedroom floor and took it downstairs to my coin jar, a gallon mayonnaise jar. I probably haven’t used a gallon of mayonnaise in all my 65 years, so I have no idea from whence the jar came. It is about a third full, with a combination of pennies, nickels dimes and quarters. I keep it beside my desk to remind me that this is how life unfolds, a few coins here and a few coins there. I never fill it all the way up, in part because I couldn’t lift it. But it also reminds me that there is always more where that came from. I think that if I were to hoard them I would grow stingy of spirit and this is not how I want to spend the coins of my jar or my life and time. I want to spend them freely and trust they will be replaced, and that somehow the rhythm and balance of it all will continue.

Rolling the coins in preparation for depositing them in the bank, the quarters are the big things to which I give my time– friends, family, and tending my inner garden. Dimes and nickels go to more mundane yet necessary parts of life like cleaning the house and grocery shopping. Pennies are reserved for the things I would never do if given the choice, but I’m not.

This sounds simple, but I’m never quite sure what value to assign to what. I used to think of the larger amounts were things that were hard, but as time goes on I see them as the things that bring the most joy. I spend a few more minutes pondering what costs what. I wrap the last of the coins and the process starts all over again. The jar is never empty and it is never quite full.  And that’s okay with me.