Grandma Diary: Pancakes & Coins

After my husband cleaned out his closet and dresser a couple days ago, he handed me a mug full of coins, amassed from emptying his pockets. US currency and foreign coins, from overseas travel, filled the cup.

My eldest son and his children came yesterday for breakfast, giving their mother a chance to prepare for Passover. I’d made two kinds of pancakes—blueberry and banana to satisfy the varying tastes. After eating, I brought out the coins, offering that if they sorted, they could keep the change. I added a large coin-filled coffee can that their father had used as a piggy bank years ago and had been sitting on the shelf, giving them more work to do and more money to earn.

My grandson, 8, and his sister, 6,  called the foreign coins, “fake money,” and gave those to their four-year-old brother, who none the wiser, dropped them in an empty coffee can, happy to create a percussion instrument to shake and make loud noises. We laughed, noting they wouldn’t be able to pull that con much longer.

The sorting began in earnest. They piled pennies, in batches of 100, stacked nickels by 20s, dimes by 10s and quarters by four. When they turned up short of a particular coin, they’d  ask me to find them another one or two to even things up.

After a solid hour of counting and sorting, the task, interrupted only by a visit to a local park, was done. They asked me to divide it. Each ended up with $16, and left physically fed and financially fortified.

Advertisement