Story Time
Five Dollars
My sister sent me five dollars for my birthday again this year. The card was beautiful. The front bore one of my favourite photographs, “Moonrise Hernendez”. Michelle has always been thoughtful that way. The inside had a poem about aging and the passage of time. She had signed it, of course. There in bright blue ink she had scrawled in her doctor’s hand “Happy birthday, I look forward to seeing you for the holidays this year. Michelle”.
I took the card and set it upright on the mantle alongside the overly ornate one from my mother, who would be hosting our reunion for the holidays. Next to hers was a simple paper card from my Uncle who went to Cambodia to get blown up. He said he’d rather go work with wars of ideology than whatever brewed in our family continually. His card read the same every year for every holiday. “Hope this made it on time. I’m still alive and kicking hearts back into gear. Enjoy yourself. Chuck.” The front bore the words “Happy Birthday” in a slightly different ink. We always joked that Uncle Chuck just made up a bunch at one go which all say the same thing and he sends them out at the appropriate times without a second thought. I never thought it was funny.
I picked the five dollar bill up off the table where I had laid it to read my sister’s card. It was worn. The edges of the linen paper were folded and creased but the whole of the thing had been pressed very flat. The softness of it reminded me that this piece of currency had passed through countless hands before coming to mine.
Grandpa had died in 1984. This had been the beginning of the trouble. We all remembered clearly the day. He had been diagnosed with a rare brain cancer. Luckily this meant that Grandpa knew he was going. He took his remaining life by the coat and dragged it wherever it would take him. He had always been a man in love with life but he thought first about financial prudence and value for money. It turns out seeing hills in a different country when there were perfectly good ones right here was not as far from his mind as he had us believe when we were younger. He went on cruises, he flew to obscure places, he quite nearly went sky diving. I also happen to know he began driving with the a/c on. He did all of this to feel fulfilled, to say he had done something with his life. So the day that his number came up he was ready and at peace. The tremors started the morning of Boxing Day stronger than ever. We were all at the house because of Christmas. Shortly after dinner he was gone.
The trouble with taking over one’s life like that is that it costs a lot of money. No one had the heart to tell Grandpa that his final bash at living was beyond his means. He left behind him a debt which I still marvel to think about. The only thing I can figure is that he must have thought that insurance would pay for all the medical bills. He hadn’t had insurance for years.
By the time 1986 rolled around the toll was showing. We’d all vowed to pay back the debt Grandpa had left. It wouldn’t be fair to leave it to Grandma. We valued Grandma as our last thread to that generation since Dad’s parents didn’t get to count as grandparents. They had disowned him when he told them he was in love with my mother. It was bad enough that she wasn’t a nice Jewish girl but a Catholic, that was too far.
Uncle Chuck was working three jobs and trying to settle down with his new wife. He should have been going through his residency. He always told me, after just slightly too much egg nog that he could have been a heart surgeon. He had the hands for it, he told me.
Mom was trying to figure out how to get Michelle and I through college. Mom, who had put up with so much already. He was her father after all. For some reason it had fallen to her to attend to the needs of our aging relatives. I think it was so she could feel like she was doing something but she had been there to take care of Grandpa whenever he would allow it. He much preferred the hospice nurses. He said the thought of making his daughter help him pee and clean it up when he hadn’t known to ask was unbearable. The point was moot, he never made it to that stage. He likely was proud to die continent. Now the father she had doted on had left the family in this hole. How she made that work in her head I will never know. She put on a proud face and never mentioned that none of the cruises had cost as much as the hospice nurses who didn’t need to help him too pee. Not after the first time anyway. What made it all worse was Grandma’s deteriorating health.
Grandma was what you would call a spunky woman. She was no longer spry as I’m told she was in her youth. In fact, the rumour between myself and Michelle was that she had once been an Olympic hopeful before the war. You could believe it too. If anyone was going to jump a high bar Grandma would certainly have wanted to. She didn’t much like television and she considered it her personal mission to see that we didn’t lose anything for having only one set of Grandparents. We were also the only Grandchildren she was likely to have. Chuck and Sarah had tried so hard but it didn’t seem to be in the cards for them.
After two years Grandma had tried everything to pay off Grandpa’s debt. She’d put mortgages on the house, taken loans out on every piece of property she could sign as collateral and even played the stock market. If her efforts had done anything it had made things worse. The stocks fell through and she owed the bank for interest into the bargain. It was an absolute mess all around.
On October 23, though, things changed. It was my birthday. Mom never told me the details only that Grandma had died in the night. She had left me a card though. The card was a floral printed pink one. The inside had no pre-printed message. Instead, in Grandma’s faltering hand, the card read. “Enjoy yourself and share this with your sister”. Inside the card had been set, with what I know to have been the utmost care and love, a five dollar bill. It was creased and weathered and I know now that it was precious beyond its worth.
Mom had kept something from me. We figured it out, of course. That’s why I never spent the money. Grandma, after two years of scraping and misery, had taken care of it all in one fell swoop. She had been found, according to Uncle Chuck who said it was only fair that we be informed, in a bare house. She had cleaned out the whole place. Some research told us that McGilicutty’s moving had taken care of the actual physical activity but nonetheless it was all gone. Everything she had ever owned had been moved out that very day.
The bank would later tell us that she had sold them the house. Her other possessions had been purchased by three shops in the city depending on whether it was furniture, antiques or collectables. The rest had apparently gone to the salvation army. The money from the sales had gone to settle the remaining debts with the bank. Everything had gone and in exchange she had taken care of everything. All of the debt was settled. It was a masterstroke.
Grandma was clearly a genius because she managed to pull it all off without us hearing anything about it and it all came off without a hitch. The only things left were Grandma and a white envelope which lay next to her when she was found in the cavernous empty front hall.
I wish it had been a note. Something to tell us what had happened. Instead it was a card to me. Which said inside “Enjoy yourself and share this with your sister”. It was the last five dollars. After all of that work. After a lifetime of graft and thrift all that was left was this five and a card.
Now I turn the linen paper artifact over in my hand. After twenty years we still enacted this tradition. When we still lived together at home we could just keep it in the old cookbook Grandma had given us one Christmas. It was always available to look at and handle then. When we left for college though I got the cookbook. She was a year behind me. Her birthday is in April, right around Easter. After having it for the better part of a year I sent it to her in a card. I also sent her some fuzzy socks. Ever since we have exchanged this bill, a relic of another time and place. Our birthdays falling almost exactly half a year apart was happy circumstance. We fairly share it between us. I have it for the winter, during which it resides in the battered copy of “The Joy of Cooking” and midway through spring give it to her. She keeps it, I’ve been told, in a copy of the Physician’s Desk Reference. Things have gotten better. Obviously we don’t stress about debt anymore. Everyone had been working so hard that when the next round of paychecks came in with no Grandma to hand it to things changed. Chuck, for example left for Cambodia. Mom, dropped a job and has since retired from her long career at the bakery. Michelle is a Doctor now. I guess we did what she said. We may have argued about it and hated each other and fought but eventually we did her bidding. “Enjoy yourself and share this with your sister”.
101 words on Five Dollars
Grandpa died in 1984. The debt crushed our family. Grandma scraped so hard to fix everything. Afterward, all that was left was five dollars and a birthday card for me. Mother never told me more than grandma had died in the night. Uncle Chuck said we had a right to know. I think the idea that we needed to know is part of why he ran away to Cambodia. “Still alive an kicking hearts back into gear” his cards always read. I hope he’s really alright. My sister, Michelle’s cards are always personal. We still share Grandma’s last five dollar bill.
Coffee and Love
I met the love of my life fifteen years ago. It was in this very coffee house. Things in here have changed since then, of course. Seattle hasn’t changed so much but this place... I feel like it doesn’t properly exist anymore. I had been playing the piano and selling coffee here for about a year when she came. Every day I worked and played and I’d sleep in the loft after closing.
Lynn baked simply everything and I used to wake up every morning to the aroma of her. It was the collective smell of cinnamon and everything that is right with the world. There is only one name for a smell like that; Lynn. She was a vision of truth and glory given from the same stuff as sunlight and she made the best poppy seed cake I have ever eaten.
“Lynn,” I said every morning, “you smell like a dream.” She’d smile at me, like an angel creating the idea of beauty, give me a kiss on the cheek and say, “I hope it’s a good dream.” That was our ritual.
I remember the day she left. It wasn’t raining for anyone but me. She had to sort out her life she said. Lazing around in a coffee shop was nice but there is more to living. Without another word to me she picked up and went to Des Moines. I hear she’s a masseuse now. I love her. I never told her.
Things From Coffee and Love I had to cut out but couldn’t bear to part with.
The big focus back then was baked goods. You could go anywhere for some brown swill water coffee is coffee unless it’s bad. Tim, who owned the place back then, knew that. That’s why Lynn came. She was a vision of truth and glory given from the same stuff as sunlight and she made the best poppy seed cake I have ever eaten.
Every morning Lynn would be here smelling like world peace and eternal concepts beyond the understanding of the bongo players who played during the lunch hour.
My sister sent me five dollars for my birthday again this year. The card was beautiful. The front bore one of my favourite photographs, “Moonrise Hernendez”. Michelle has always been thoughtful that way. The inside had a poem about aging and the passage of time. She had signed it, of course. There in bright blue ink she had scrawled in her doctor’s hand “Happy birthday, I look forward to seeing you for the holidays this year. Michelle”.
I took the card and set it upright on the mantle alongside the overly ornate one from my mother, who would be hosting our reunion for the holidays. Next to hers was a simple paper card from my Uncle who went to Cambodia to get blown up. He said he’d rather go work with wars of ideology than whatever brewed in our family continually. His card read the same every year for every holiday. “Hope this made it on time. I’m still alive and kicking hearts back into gear. Enjoy yourself. Chuck.” The front bore the words “Happy Birthday” in a slightly different ink. We always joked that Uncle Chuck just made up a bunch at one go which all say the same thing and he sends them out at the appropriate times without a second thought. I never thought it was funny.
I picked the five dollar bill up off the table where I had laid it to read my sister’s card. It was worn. The edges of the linen paper were folded and creased but the whole of the thing had been pressed very flat. The softness of it reminded me that this piece of currency had passed through countless hands before coming to mine.
Grandpa had died in 1984. This had been the beginning of the trouble. We all remembered clearly the day. He had been diagnosed with a rare brain cancer. Luckily this meant that Grandpa knew he was going. He took his remaining life by the coat and dragged it wherever it would take him. He had always been a man in love with life but he thought first about financial prudence and value for money. It turns out seeing hills in a different country when there were perfectly good ones right here was not as far from his mind as he had us believe when we were younger. He went on cruises, he flew to obscure places, he quite nearly went sky diving. I also happen to know he began driving with the a/c on. He did all of this to feel fulfilled, to say he had done something with his life. So the day that his number came up he was ready and at peace. The tremors started the morning of Boxing Day stronger than ever. We were all at the house because of Christmas. Shortly after dinner he was gone.
The trouble with taking over one’s life like that is that it costs a lot of money. No one had the heart to tell Grandpa that his final bash at living was beyond his means. He left behind him a debt which I still marvel to think about. The only thing I can figure is that he must have thought that insurance would pay for all the medical bills. He hadn’t had insurance for years.
By the time 1986 rolled around the toll was showing. We’d all vowed to pay back the debt Grandpa had left. It wouldn’t be fair to leave it to Grandma. We valued Grandma as our last thread to that generation since Dad’s parents didn’t get to count as grandparents. They had disowned him when he told them he was in love with my mother. It was bad enough that she wasn’t a nice Jewish girl but a Catholic, that was too far.
Uncle Chuck was working three jobs and trying to settle down with his new wife. He should have been going through his residency. He always told me, after just slightly too much egg nog that he could have been a heart surgeon. He had the hands for it, he told me.
Mom was trying to figure out how to get Michelle and I through college. Mom, who had put up with so much already. He was her father after all. For some reason it had fallen to her to attend to the needs of our aging relatives. I think it was so she could feel like she was doing something but she had been there to take care of Grandpa whenever he would allow it. He much preferred the hospice nurses. He said the thought of making his daughter help him pee and clean it up when he hadn’t known to ask was unbearable. The point was moot, he never made it to that stage. He likely was proud to die continent. Now the father she had doted on had left the family in this hole. How she made that work in her head I will never know. She put on a proud face and never mentioned that none of the cruises had cost as much as the hospice nurses who didn’t need to help him too pee. Not after the first time anyway. What made it all worse was Grandma’s deteriorating health.
Grandma was what you would call a spunky woman. She was no longer spry as I’m told she was in her youth. In fact, the rumour between myself and Michelle was that she had once been an Olympic hopeful before the war. You could believe it too. If anyone was going to jump a high bar Grandma would certainly have wanted to. She didn’t much like television and she considered it her personal mission to see that we didn’t lose anything for having only one set of Grandparents. We were also the only Grandchildren she was likely to have. Chuck and Sarah had tried so hard but it didn’t seem to be in the cards for them.
After two years Grandma had tried everything to pay off Grandpa’s debt. She’d put mortgages on the house, taken loans out on every piece of property she could sign as collateral and even played the stock market. If her efforts had done anything it had made things worse. The stocks fell through and she owed the bank for interest into the bargain. It was an absolute mess all around.
On October 23, though, things changed. It was my birthday. Mom never told me the details only that Grandma had died in the night. She had left me a card though. The card was a floral printed pink one. The inside had no pre-printed message. Instead, in Grandma’s faltering hand, the card read. “Enjoy yourself and share this with your sister”. Inside the card had been set, with what I know to have been the utmost care and love, a five dollar bill. It was creased and weathered and I know now that it was precious beyond its worth.
Mom had kept something from me. We figured it out, of course. That’s why I never spent the money. Grandma, after two years of scraping and misery, had taken care of it all in one fell swoop. She had been found, according to Uncle Chuck who said it was only fair that we be informed, in a bare house. She had cleaned out the whole place. Some research told us that McGilicutty’s moving had taken care of the actual physical activity but nonetheless it was all gone. Everything she had ever owned had been moved out that very day.
The bank would later tell us that she had sold them the house. Her other possessions had been purchased by three shops in the city depending on whether it was furniture, antiques or collectables. The rest had apparently gone to the salvation army. The money from the sales had gone to settle the remaining debts with the bank. Everything had gone and in exchange she had taken care of everything. All of the debt was settled. It was a masterstroke.
Grandma was clearly a genius because she managed to pull it all off without us hearing anything about it and it all came off without a hitch. The only things left were Grandma and a white envelope which lay next to her when she was found in the cavernous empty front hall.
I wish it had been a note. Something to tell us what had happened. Instead it was a card to me. Which said inside “Enjoy yourself and share this with your sister”. It was the last five dollars. After all of that work. After a lifetime of graft and thrift all that was left was this five and a card.
Now I turn the linen paper artifact over in my hand. After twenty years we still enacted this tradition. When we still lived together at home we could just keep it in the old cookbook Grandma had given us one Christmas. It was always available to look at and handle then. When we left for college though I got the cookbook. She was a year behind me. Her birthday is in April, right around Easter. After having it for the better part of a year I sent it to her in a card. I also sent her some fuzzy socks. Ever since we have exchanged this bill, a relic of another time and place. Our birthdays falling almost exactly half a year apart was happy circumstance. We fairly share it between us. I have it for the winter, during which it resides in the battered copy of “The Joy of Cooking” and midway through spring give it to her. She keeps it, I’ve been told, in a copy of the Physician’s Desk Reference. Things have gotten better. Obviously we don’t stress about debt anymore. Everyone had been working so hard that when the next round of paychecks came in with no Grandma to hand it to things changed. Chuck, for example left for Cambodia. Mom, dropped a job and has since retired from her long career at the bakery. Michelle is a Doctor now. I guess we did what she said. We may have argued about it and hated each other and fought but eventually we did her bidding. “Enjoy yourself and share this with your sister”.
101 words on Five Dollars
Grandpa died in 1984. The debt crushed our family. Grandma scraped so hard to fix everything. Afterward, all that was left was five dollars and a birthday card for me. Mother never told me more than grandma had died in the night. Uncle Chuck said we had a right to know. I think the idea that we needed to know is part of why he ran away to Cambodia. “Still alive an kicking hearts back into gear” his cards always read. I hope he’s really alright. My sister, Michelle’s cards are always personal. We still share Grandma’s last five dollar bill.
Coffee and Love
I met the love of my life fifteen years ago. It was in this very coffee house. Things in here have changed since then, of course. Seattle hasn’t changed so much but this place... I feel like it doesn’t properly exist anymore. I had been playing the piano and selling coffee here for about a year when she came. Every day I worked and played and I’d sleep in the loft after closing.
Lynn baked simply everything and I used to wake up every morning to the aroma of her. It was the collective smell of cinnamon and everything that is right with the world. There is only one name for a smell like that; Lynn. She was a vision of truth and glory given from the same stuff as sunlight and she made the best poppy seed cake I have ever eaten.
“Lynn,” I said every morning, “you smell like a dream.” She’d smile at me, like an angel creating the idea of beauty, give me a kiss on the cheek and say, “I hope it’s a good dream.” That was our ritual.
I remember the day she left. It wasn’t raining for anyone but me. She had to sort out her life she said. Lazing around in a coffee shop was nice but there is more to living. Without another word to me she picked up and went to Des Moines. I hear she’s a masseuse now. I love her. I never told her.
Things From Coffee and Love I had to cut out but couldn’t bear to part with.
The big focus back then was baked goods. You could go anywhere for some brown swill water coffee is coffee unless it’s bad. Tim, who owned the place back then, knew that. That’s why Lynn came. She was a vision of truth and glory given from the same stuff as sunlight and she made the best poppy seed cake I have ever eaten.
Every morning Lynn would be here smelling like world peace and eternal concepts beyond the understanding of the bongo players who played during the lunch hour.