100 Pennies

In third grade, my class read The Hundred Penny Box by Sharon Bell Mathis about a boy whose great-great aunt has a penny for each year of her life, a physical object representing the stories that capture a life lived.

We started the book a few days after I returned from my great-grandmother’s funeral. I hadn’t attended; I had stayed back with my mother’s cousin’s wife and her children, and she had taken my sister and me to Don’s and allowed us to choose a cookie from the bakery, which was exciting but also filled me with shame to be so happy about that when I didn’t have my great-grandma anymore. And as we read this book, I started crying during the reading group. I was never going to see my great-grandmother again.

I had forgotten about that until I saw the announcement that the mint was ordered to cease creating pennies. All of the news stories focused on what this would mean for pricing or how pennies would still be around for many years, even if they weren’t creating new ones.

But I was thinking about the hundred penny box and how the character’s great-great aunt wouldn’t have been able to have a 2025 penny to mark this year of her life. How each change has an impact we can’t always predict, bumping life out of place.