Counting Pennies

One, two, three, four… and so on to fifty. 

A brown paper coin wrap is waiting.  A slight crease folded about one half an inch from its edge.  The paper placed carefully onto an open Encyclopedia Britannica, the crease fold aligned with the gutter between the open pages of the reference book.

Carefully and cautiously, the tarnished copper treasures are tipped upright onto the brown paper wrap, one, two, three, four… and so on to fifty.  Tiny fingers balancing tiny coins, onto brown paper, placed into a reference book, open to a page with a picture and article of a strange place in far off Africa.

We collect these coins with our trick and treating.  Little orange cardboard money boxes secured around our necks by coarse brown string, beacons of charity to the occupants of the houses we yell our Halloween apples to.  Children all over our city are making the same effort, collecting pennies, into little orange boxes.

These boxes come to our house from the schools.  Hundreds of little orange boxes filled with pennies.  For several days four sets of children’s hands and one set of mother’s hands, sit around the dining table spending their evenings wrapping coins.  Counting pennies, while eating candy, wrapping pennies, while reading the pages of the book beneath the wrap.  Reading of Nigeria, and Biafra, and listening to the news of families starving, and children dying.

One, two, three, four… and so on to fifty.  Over and over again.  Eating our candy.  Counting these pennies.  So people in a far off land may have food, and perhaps life.