3 Jan 2011
Talk of the Town
LegaciesFour Hundred Dresses
By Gay Talese
[...] [Diane Becker, Elaine Kaufman's business partner, recalled that the recently deceased owner of Elaine's restaurant] "had a longtime habit -- something she picked up as a kid born at the start of the Depression to Russian Jewish parents who emigrated to the Bronx. Whenever she passed a public phone, she'd stick her fingers into the coin return, fishing around for change. At the restaurant in the afternoon, she'd often sit near the two phones and absent-mindedly check for change. I'd say to her, `Elaine, since people started using cell phones, you haven't gotten change out of those phones in years.' She'd check anyway. And she never got any change.
"A few days after she died, I was at the restaurant, telling Richie, our awning cleaner, that story," Becker continued. "For effect, I stuck my hand into one of the coin returns and, to my surprise, I pulled out a quarter. When I put my hand into the other phone, I pulled out another quarter. Only this one was accompanied by a penny. That was Elaine getting the last laugh and wishing me luck."
Woman's World , 26 March 2012, p. 38.
My Guardian Angel
READERS SHARE THEIR STORIES...
Dimes from Dad
Angels don't just send pennies from Heaven -- any coin can be a sign! as
Woman's World reader Lyndal Knight of Carmichael, California, discovered. She writes:
Even as my dad's illness made his world smaller and smaller, the twinkle in his eye never faded. And, cracking jokes and pulling pranks, he could always make me laugh.
One day I found him with such a serious look on his face, I kissed the top of his head. "A penny for your thoughts, Dad," I said.
"I think they're worth at least a dime," he quipped.
Soon after, Dad could no longer speak, though he could still show his feelings with his eyes. And when I brought the wonderful man I was dating, Ron, to visit him, Dad winked, signaling his approval.
They, all too soon, Dad slipped away. We knew it was his time; that, blessedly, he was no longer in pain. But knowing that didn't make it any easier on our hearts. It didn't help us miss him any less.
Aching with grief, I often found myself talking to Dad as the months passed.
"Oh, Dad," I'd sigh, my eyes welling with tears. "I wish you could've stuck around to get to know Ron -- you really would've liked him. I wish you were here cracking jokes the way you always did. I just miss you so much..."
Just then, I happened to look down -- and beside my slipper was a dime, heads up and twinkling.
And what's that? I wondered. Because inexplicably stuck to my slipper was a sticker -- and when I pulled it off, I gasped. Printed on the sticker was an angel's wing and the word
Knight, our last name!
Blinking with amazement, I smiled as Dad's message dawned on me loud and clear: Dad would always "stick around" me.
But that was only the beginning. Over the next few years, my mom, sister and I began finding dimes everywhere -- always coinciding with when we were really missing Dad.
Then, last year, I had a bad fall, breaking my wrist. As I awaited surgery, everyone told me how risky it was, with the shattered bone fragments very close to an artery.
Dad, I found myself praying, please guide the doctors...
After the procedure, I was in recovery when, as two nurses were helping me roll onto my side, one commented, "There's a coin on her back!"
Even through the fog of the fading anesthesia, I felt a surge of love. "Is it a dime?" I murmured, knowing already that it was.
"Yes!" the nurse said. "But how on Earth did it get there?"
"It's from my Dad," I said.
"But that's against regulations. Everything has to be sterile..."
Smiling, I explained about Dad's sense of humor and signs, adding: "I bet he wanted me to know he's got my back."
Amazed, the nurses taped Dad's dime over my heart where it stayed, twinkling up at me as I healed completely -- thanks, I knew, to my dad, my angel.
Dear
Abby
30
July 2012
[Dime]
Dear
Abby
23
August 2012
[Penny]
http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/?uc_full_date=20121005
Dear
Abby
5
October 2012
[Pennies]
Dear
Abby
12
February 2013
[Penny]
http://www.uexpress.com/dearabby/2014/6/9/2/found-quarter-triggers-treasured-memory-of
Dear Abby
9 June 2014
[“Psychic medium” Laura Lynne Jackson has written a
book about interpreting random occurrences as signs from dead loved ones. “[W]e
decide for ourselves what these synchronistic events – these magical
coincidences – mean to us” (xx). She gains comfort herself from images or
references to giraffes, penguins, and lard(!), the music of Elvis Presley, and
appearances of dimes – all signs from her dead father.]
Laura Lynne Jackson, Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe (New York: Spiegel &
Grau, 2019), 63, 91-3.
Coins, too – since they consist of metal – have a
level of conductivity that seems to make them easy targets for the Other Side.
Look for coins appearing in unlikely places or at unlikely times, specifically
when you are thinking of someone you love who has crossed, wrestling with an
important decision, or having a difficult day. I once found a dime standing on
its edge in my dryer – at the exact moment that I was thinking about my father,
who had crossed. The Other Side finds a way to grab our attention, so I
interpreted that unusual coin behavior as a sign – a hello and a hug from my
dad.
* * *
Nine months after my father passed, I flew to Tokyo to
appear on a Japanese TV program. […]
When I was finished with the show and got into a cab
to go back to the hotel, something shiny on the floor of the cab caught my eye.
I saw that it was an American dime. I had been randomly finding dimes ever
since my father crossed, whenever I was having a hard time with his passing, or
making a difficult decision, or just wanting to feel him around me. Wow, Dad, I thought. An American dime on the floor of a cab in
Japan! Well done.
=====
Chris Woodyard, Haunted
Ohio II (Beavercreek, OH: Kestrel Publications, 1992), 121-2.
Frank E. Evans of Clayton reports:
“I moved into Apartment 41 on November 1, 1990. […]
“I found a penny right in the center of the table,
another one right in the center of a chair, another new penny heads up, right
in the corner of the davenport. They were always in the center of things.
“I always look in a cup before I pour anything in it.
I looked, went to pour my coffee, and there was a penny in that cup, looking at
me.
“Right now I have collected forty-four pennies and one
dime – fifty-four cents.”
[Evans attributes the pennies to the work of unidentified
malevolent ghosts.]
