“Close your eyes, make a wish, believe in it and then throw your coin, okay?”
I was five when my mama made me make my first coin wish. She’d make a picnic basket and take me to the nature park on my birthdays and I’d throw the coin in a fountain in the park. She never lacked pocket change, mostly of coins whose value was that of a cent. She only ever gave me one coin and always called it the lucky penny. Overtime my wish list grew and for every wish I wanted a lucky penny and I’d cry so that she could get me more but she was persistent, “Only one lucky penny child!” she’d say. And so I arranged my wishes in order of priority and threw the one coin I got for all the wishes. That’s probably why the coin always felt too heavy, too much loading. I was young, and when you are young, you want lots of things. My list was endless, and so I cheated. Logically, had I made one wish each birthday and lived till a 100 years, I‘d die before getting to half the list.
Unfortunately, none of my wishes ever came true. Was it the cheating? maybe or maybe not. Maybe I never was meant to get all the things I wished for, they were probably unrealistic. I don’t blame mama though, she always wanted the best for me.
Now I’m 67 years old, my hair all gray and I bet am aging like fine wine. I have made peace with myself. I no longer make a fuss over unfulfilled wishes, bent dreams. I have allowed fate to take its course, only doing what I can. But it’s funny though, how old habits die young. I stopped coin wishing at 41, too late an age, but the heart tends to be resilient when it wants something. I never was one to give up easily, but with old age comes new perspectives.
I’ve resulted into being a coin collector. Funny and coincidental because it all started the year I gave up coin wishing. It’s on a late afternoon and am taking a stroll in a nature park, I pass by a family celebrating their kid’s birthday. The kid makes a wish and throws a coin into the fountain. The déjà vu is real, but we are in the 2000’s and I thought coin wishing was as old as me. So I wait around until they are packed, when they leave, I pick the coin (gross!), buy a sling bag on my way home and put the coin in, for safe keeping, I tell myself.
But since then, it has become a habit. Collecting wish coins, each and everyone I come across, keeping them in my sling bag. I often tell myself that I am keeping them safe, away from the world’s harsh tones and deathly stares. But then again I have wondered, quite often actually, whether all the coins I tossed, wishes I made, were picked up by someone else who wanted to keep them “safe”, but in so doing, they kept them from being free, like birds of the air, to fly high and discover themselves, and maybe that’s why my wishes never came true.
I think I should visit the sea soon, free the coins. But I can’t promise, I like having them around.
(fiction)
Comments