Dimes

My grandmother, Mrs. Osa Alexander, lived to the age of 102. She was amazing. She mothered three girls - my mother and her two sisters, both older. When my mother was five, Kenneth, my grandfather, died and Osa was left alone to fend for the girls. She was not gentle (she could still hug me until it hurt well into her 90's), but she was determined. She went to work before it was so broadly, socially acceptable. She saved enough money to provide for herself in her retirement and leave some to her daughters.

When I was a little girl living in Phoenix, occasionally she would come to visit. This was big, because, except for a road trip to Tennessee, I don't know if she ever left Kentucky. What I remember most vividly about her is that she always had Butter Rum Lifesavers in her pocketbook (she carried a pocketbook, not a purse) and she always had a dime to give us girls. Us girls. There's the Kentucky in my blood coming out in my writing. Us girls, by the way, is my sister and I. A dime could buy us a candy bar back then. It was always a dime that she gave us. Never two nickels, not a quarter between the two of us. A dime each.

After she died I decided to write about her. Well, sort of about her. What I wound up writing about is more of a composite of myself, my mother and what I knew of my grandmother. The setting is Kentucky around the time that my grandmother would have been growing up. The story roughly follows my Mamaw's in that the mother in the story, Mama, is widowed and left with three girls to raise. As I write and intersperse fact with fiction, what I find is that I can more understand with my grandmother and my mother. Writing another's perspective opens up all kinds of love and understanding that wasn't there before. The word therapeutic just ran through my mind, but it's so much more than that, so much deeper and all-encompassing. My attitude inside myself, as well as externally, has evolved so much that I see more of people than I was able to before. I can see what lies beneath their behavior even if I don't have firsthand knowledge of it. I can see what may soothe them even if they are strangers. I can defuse situations in which I used to be the match striking itself and igniting the dynamite. I don't just react as I used to, I consider the person I'm dealing with

Since my Mamaw died, I have found dimes lying about. I started finding dimes like people find pennies. But it's stranger than that. I finally started writing down where I found dimes and the circumstances because it's rather unbelievable.

For example, I went into a practice studio at St. Thomas University to practice piano. The piano bench was against the wall and there was a regular chair at the piano. I sat my things on the bench, moved the chair, moved my things to the chair then moved the bench to the piano and practiced. When I got up to leave, there was a dime centered on the bench right where I'd been sitting.

I got in Doug's car to drive somewhere. When I reached down to move the seat back I saw a a dime perfectly balanced on the narrow lever. Doug, by the way, doesn't keep change. He gives it to me or puts it in the ashtray of his car.

I was walking around the Renaissance Festival grounds the Monday morning after a weekend spent there. Something glinted in my periphery. With all the trash that lands on the grounds out there, I usually ignore things like this - especially at this distance. For some reason I walked over to it. It was a dime.

I was walking with a friend down a neighborhood street and we were talking. Suddenly I stopped. She asked me why I had stopped. I was looking just ahead of us. On the ground were five or six dimes scattered. Only dimes. She hadn't seen them. That was very dreamlike as I have had many recurring dreams of finding change lying about which I gather because others can't see it.

Usually finding the dimes was not so remarkable. It's the fact that I was finding dimes like I used to find pennies, often. I didn't find any dimes in Tashkent. I only found two coins the entire time I was in Tashkent. I remember this because coins are rarely used there.

My friend Julie doesn't like carrying change around with her. She is also a very generous person. When she has loose change after a transaction in a shop, she tosses it onto the sidewalk outside the shop " . . . so some kid can find it and get excited."

When I started writing the story of my Mamaw, I remember feeling her with me. I began to see the dimes as her encouraging me to continue writing. If I got too lazy, she'd drop one in my path.