The Coin

It was just a regular day, as she watched the fog bank roll over the hills. There was a chill in the air. She unzipped her bag and saw something shiny inside. It was a silver coin, about half the size of her palm. She picked it up, and saw the date. Nineteen forty-two. The year her father was born.

Angelica wondered how the coin had gotten in her bag. She had heard stories, mostly around the campfire as a little girl, about the spirit world and people finding objects left in ordinary places by their ancestors. What she did not know was that this coin held more than just shine; it held stories inside.

She rubbed the sides of the coin with her thumb and forefinger. Then placed it back inside the pocket of her bag where she had found it.

Angelica continued packing for her trip to Seattle. She had one more sleep and then it was wheels up for a long weekend of baseball, books and cats. Something she had been looking forward to for weeks.

As she zipped up her suitcase for its final time, there was a shift - larger than a hiccup but too small to be an earthquake. Angelica brushed it off thinking it was her imagination, maybe a bit of anxiety as she was prone to experience from time to time.

Angelica opened the window curtains and the fog had suddenly disappeared. She glanced outside. There was a cherry tree outside her window which she didn’t recall being there before. She heard children’s laughter. A screen door slammed shut. A familiar voice.

It was her grandmother’s voice. Then she smelled the familiar scent of her grandfather’s pipe. And the scent of pot roast in the crockpot.

Angelica’s front door swung open. There was a small child with a head full of strawberry blonde hair, and hazel sparkling eyes. The child looked just like the photos she had seen of her father when he was a child.

She felt something smooth in the palm of her hand. The sunshine glistened off the object. It was the shiny coin she had originally found in her bag, which now appeared in the palm of her hand. She looked at the coin again. The year had changed.

Loud banging of the drums came from what sounded like the basement. Her house did not have a basement but this house did.

Angelica climbed down the dozen or so stairs to see a teenager sitting behind a drum kit. The young man looked to be about 16 or 17. He was concentrating on a drum solo. Rat-a-tat-tat clang clang rrrrat-a-taat-taat clang. He raised his drumsticks and struck them together counting off the beats.

She glanced on the ground and saw a shiny object. The coin. She bent to pick it up. The year had changed again.

Angelica heard voices coming from the floor above her. She climbed the basement stairs to find herself inside a dorm room. There was a small group of people talking, some smoking, some studying. The colors of the room were yellows and oranges. A patch of sunlight streamed in through the hastily hung curtains.

She saw a college aged man wearing dark rimmed glasses, head bent over a book, pencil in his left hand making notes and drawing lines on a sheet of paper. When he looked up he had a dark strawberry blonde mustache that matched his head of hair.

He picked up a shiny object and tossed the coin into the air. Angelica reached her hand out to catch it. The year on the coin now read Nineteen sixty-five.

She heard planes flying above and what sounded like a cadence. She now felt like she was floating. She looked outside the window and saw Navy soldiers marching by. Angelica followed the sound of marching and found herself on the deck of a Naval ship. The sun beat down on her blonde hair as she shielded her eyes with her right hand.

A soldier marched by, catching her eye. His hair was newly shaved but the strawberry blonde mustache remained. The ship rocked and rolled, and as a wave crashed over the side of the hull Angelica saw something shiny floating through the air. The coin. She caught the shiny object. The year had changed once again.

Nineteen seventy-one.

The year Angelica was born.

There was a slight chill in the air. The last of the oak tree leaves fell to the ground. She saw a man, head slightly bald, with that same dark strawberry blonde mustache, holding a swaddled baby in his arms. He handed the babe to a woman with dark brown hair, cut short. He picked up a guitar and started to strum. Every so often he would stop, pick up a ballpoint pen and write down words. Lyrics to a song, perhaps.

Angelica remembered that song. She had found the lyric sheet tucked away in her father’s guitar case the day he had passed away. As she felt a tear start to fall down her cheek, she caught a glimpse of something shiny. She wiped the tear away and reached for the coin. At the same time, the young man had reached out for the same shiny object.

Their fingers nearly touched. Angelica could have sworn she felt her father’s fingers touch hers ever so softly. When she looked up, his head was bent again, fingers strumming that old guitar she remembered so vividly now. Singing the lyrics of the song he had written, and had left for her to find on the day he started on his next adventure.

She picked up the coin once again. The date had changed. Two thousand twenty-five. She slid the shiny object into the pocket of her jeans while the cool breeze dried the tears from her face.

Angelica pushed open the front door of her small house and walked inside to find her suitcase and backpack waiting for her just as she had left them. She felt around for the coin that she thought she had put into her pocket but instead it was nestled back inside her backpack just as she had found it, waiting for another day to tell another story.