Pennies

"And now I'm caught in the air

It's a good life."

-- Mae, "Ready and Waiting to Fall"

Well, it's a new year.

Got the feeling, for the first time, that this year is going to be really good, special. Got a lot of changes to make, as always, and some of them are bigger than any I've ever made. That should be a frightening feeling, but instead, I feel startlingly okay.

I feel I am shedding the chip on my shoulder.

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Parents bought a new car yesterday. Helped some poor car salesman get one sell closer to quota, I guess. It's a nice car, longer than it looks, gray outside and inside, with small behind-the-seat pockets and a concave backseat, the kind that curls your back in that firm, insistent new-car way.

We rode it to Rick's Cafe for the last meal of the year; I had the shrimp and scallops but I should have had the sirloin. Prior to the countdown, we Wii'd until 11pm, switched to old episodes of "The Beverly Hillbillies," then scanned basic cable channels for the straightforward ball-dropping ceremony. So many kissing folks after.

We toasted the future with sparkling white grape juice--this, instead of champagne. Ate green grapes, symbols of fertility and affluence. Had coins in all our pockets, promises of more to come. Returned to Wii-ing until the troops grew weary, then hit the hay.

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Growing up, whenever we moved into a new house (and we did that a lot), my mom would take a handful of coins from the jar and walk around to each windowsill, placing a coin in each corner. I don't know if this was supposed to ward off evil spirits or financial ruin, or to invite money, or perhaps it was a sowing gesture, a planting of currency.

My mom has a lot of those superstitions. Drop a fork, a woman will visit; a knife, a man; a spoon, a child. An itchy left hand means you will receive money (left is passive), and your right means you will pay soon.

But the ones that for whatever reason make sense to me are the coin superstitions. I read somewhere that picking up pennies only brings good luck if they are heads-up, and only if you find them randomly. If you get change, any coin minted in your birth year is good luck.

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A word about pennies: I'm not a fan. They get stuck under car mats and beneath furniture, and they fuse to carpets with gunky laziness. They are lost and discovered with little consequence, these browning copper circles. Many are mostly zinc: poser pennies. They are obsolete. Especially if they stop making them soon. 2010 will be a year in which less pennies are made. 2011 will be the last in which they are made.

But a word for pennies, too: The idea of them is beautiful, those small, forgotten bits of worth. Alone, they disappear, falling from meaning into corrosive mediocrity. In pairs, they seem fortuitous, and in large quantities they become priceless--at some magical point the setting aside of pennies turns from a habitual gesture of frugality to a conscious act of collection, of prizing, of seeing the potential of the mass, of giving to the penny more than it deserves. A penny saved, and all that; and what they won't tell you is that a penny is what you make it worth.

Years are pennies. So's this one. I want to make it worthy.