Facts & Arguments is a daily personal piece submitted by readers. Have a story to tell? See our guidelines at tgam.ca/essayguide.
I just found another dime.
I kissed it and put it in a large antique Mason jar, along with 88 other dimes I've collected since August, 2010.
It all started with a visit to a psychic. "Your Aunt Margaret says hello," he began as he fanned the air with a sprig of burning sweetgrass.
I was skeptical. Good luck finding someone in Nova Scotia who doesn't have an Aunt Margaret, I thought. Still, how did he know?
He continued to relay messages from beyond the grave, chanting prayers in Mi'kmaq. Family members long gone came and went. He described my mother's features and the cancer that took her life in 1996. He spoke of my children, my husband, my father and stepmother. I struggled to stay with him. I felt a bit nervous being there, in the basement of this tiny house at the end of a dirt road on the reserve, but I wanted to find out if the psychic really could receive messages from beyond the grave.
I stayed an hour listening to him in silence. Everything is as it should be, he said.
As I was getting ready to leave, he suddenly took me by the hand. "Your mother will be leaving you dimes," he said. "Put them in a Mason jar and pass them along to your first-born grandchild." I left in a hurry.
Even after finding that first dime soon afterward, I still wasn't sure. Finding a dime all by itself is hardly a thunderbolt from heaven.
But the dimes kept coming, one by one.
My mother lived long enough to see her five grandchildren come into the world. They remember their Nanny as a gentle, loving soul who appreciated the arts and had a beautiful voice. One of her favourite things to do was read children's stories. Fairy tales came to life when she opened a book, casting a spell on her young audience. She didn't just read a story. She breathed life into the characters and had a wonderful sense of drama. While pursuing her passions, she taught us the importance of self-expression, which she found in choral singing and writing travel journals, in quilt-making and painting.
The silence that followed her untimely death at 64 was devastating. Gone were the little pearls of wisdom and comfort she tossed our way.
I wanted to believe the psychic, to know that my mother was watching over us. But the skeptic in me said otherwise. Still the dimes kept coming.
Last year, we were moving my eldest daughter into her new house. I found a dime on the kitchen floor, and another in the hallway. As we were moving my other daughter into her first apartment, I found three dimes on the steps leading up to her new home.
While strolling through Central Park in New York with my Aunt Margaret's daughters and their children, the youngest, Eve, suddenly stopped. "Look what I found," she said. It was a Canadian dime.
Visiting my sister in Utah, a Canadian dime appeared in the back seat of the car. While standing in the kitchen with my daughters, a dime suddenly fell out of nowhere and landed at my feet. Always a single, solitary dime. But I was afraid to believe. I didn't want to build up my hopes, only to have them quashed if the dimes stopped coming. Yet the Mason jar kept filling up.
Then the moment of revelation came.
I was scheduled to teach a lecture series on French Impressionists at the public library's auditorium. I had only taught smaller classes and was terrified at the prospect of taking questions from a group of 80 adults while speaking into a microphone, reading my notes and flipping to the next slide, all at the same time. I had taken on a new challenge far outside my comfort zone and was afraid I would fail miserably.
I approached the podium. There, sitting on the ledge waiting for me was a single, solitary dime.
"No one's been in here since children's storytime," said Vanessa, the program co-ordinator for my lecture series.
I stared at it. "I think it's meant for me," I said, and told Vanessa the story about my mother leaving me dimes. I had never spoken to anyone about it until that moment. Suddenly, the story came to life. I knew this was no longer mere coincidence. Mom was leaving me dimes.
Why dimes and not nickels, quarters, loonies or toonies? I live in Nova Scotia. Home of the Bluenose.
If I'm ever blessed with grandchildren of my own, I'll tell them about their great-grandmother and her beautiful voice. I'll tell them the story about my dimes falling from heaven. As the Mi'kmaq psychic taught me, they'll understand that there are forces far greater than ourselves.
I placed this story inside the antique Mason jar with the dimes, so when the jar gets passed down through each generation, my mother's voice will never stop casting its spell.
And they'll know where to put the dimes they find when I am gone.
Dee Appleby lives in Truro, N.S.