Coins of Comfort: A Dad Memory
I had a hard time starting the first grade. Being the first-born of a stay-at-home mom, I was not use to being gone all day from home. It was hard for me to make it through a full day at school without crying at some point. I would wake up and feel sick to my stomach and would hope that Mom would not make me go today. After a month or more of this, my parents started to really worry. It was Dad who came up with a plan that, I am assuming, he likely felt was a shot-in-the-dark. But it worked.
He gave me a silver dollar. He called it my magic coin. I was to keep it in my pocket and then hold it when I felt sad. It would make me not miss home so much. And by golly, that is exactly what it did. I took it to school everyday and eventually, I wasn’t so sad.
When Dad went in for his surgery on November 5, 2008, I decided to return the favor. I found two silver dollars, one from the year in which I was born and another from the year in which my brother was born. I took those to the hospital in Texas and gave them to Dad the morning of his surgery, hoping that he wouldn’t feel as scared if he had them. He looked at the coins, looked at me, and with tears in his eyes said, “You must be my daughter.” Behind him, his wife was pulling a purple bag out of her purse. Inside of it? Two coins. A Texas quarter and an Oklahoma quarter.
Oh, how tightly I held onto the coins during the surgery, during his two hospital stays, and during his memorial service. And now they sit on my night stand, reminding me that Dad is still waiting for me to come Home…
