My mother’s parents gave us grandkids coins and jewelry made of coins, even though they weren’t coin collectors. Each of us kids received a silver dollar from the year we were born from Grandpa. I cherished my Grandpa coin because he died a year after I was born, so I never knew him.
I was born in 1968. He died in 1969. The coin was from 1971.
I was 45 when I realized the coin he “left” for me was from two years after he died. It even had a little sticker in my mother’s hand reading “Meg from Grandpa 1969” on it. So enamored with nostalgia for a grandfather I never knew, I kept my dollar coin safe in a jewelry box for decades, only glancing at it occasionally. I never considered its true origins.
It was more likely that Mom had sourced that coin for me, perhaps to replace the lost original, perhaps to assuage my youngest-child-being-left-out sadness, maybe just in oversight. I don’t know. But it clearly is NOT the coin my grandfather left for me, if he left one at all. And if he didn’t, that’s okay. I still have his dimples.
I have jewelry made of vintage coins from Grandpa. One, a pendant made from a coin stamped with an image of a young Queen Victoria, now hangs around my neck daily, a cool reminder of her peaceful love. Grandma was a saint by all accounts, beloved by everyone who knew her. She was my last grandparent, the only one I ever knew, and her example of kindness resonated throughout my life. My goal was to be as sweet and beloved as she was.
Another piece of jewelry from Grandma is a heavy bracelet made of 16 vintage coins. My whole life, I thought these were coins Grandpa brought back from fighting in WWI, so it was another connection to Grandpa, and I could almost feel my grandmother’s warmth when I wore it.
The other day, I took it out and really looked at the coins. Clearly, for the first time. There is one well-worn shilling with George V on the front, a threepence with George VI, a franc and an Irish threepence with a rabbit on it, some kind of commemorative birth year coin.
It’s from 1934. There’s a franc from 1922. A sixpence with George V from 1927 and a George VI threepence from 1942.
This bracelet was clearly not from Grandpa’s time in Europe in WWI.
It must have come from my Uncle Joe, who fought in WWII. Among the coins were some from Mexico, Panama and Guatemala, further confirming its provenance as not being from my grandfather.
I was deflated by this realization. I never knew Uncle Joe except for his role as my mother’s least-favorite brother. To have my grandfather removed from the pipeline of memories was disappointing, although the bracelet had still once belonged to my grandmother, and she did cherish it. But the story I had told myself about what it meant wasn’t true.
This is a common theme in what I am learning about myself and the way I see the world. Some of my dearest-held beliefs and attachments are getting a deeper look, and I’m finding some ugly truths I never noticed before.
I was that weird kid in middle school who was fascinated by dead composers—specifically, George Gershwin. Partly because the lyrics (thanks to his brother Ira) were full of unrequited love, and partly because the music held such lyrical longing, I was drawn first to the torch songs and later to piano and symphonic works by Gershwin. I’ve considered him one of the great American composers from a shockingly early age. What 12-year old does that?
Until last summer, I had never seen a full production of Porgy and Bess. We took the opportunity to see the Metropolitan Opera’s live recording of their 2019 production because I’d been singing “Summertime” as a lullaby for my kids, “I Loves You Porgy” to my husband, and strains of “There’s a Boat that’s Leaving Soon for New York” over the years. Why not see the whole thing for once?
Sitting in the dark theatre, I realized why The Met hadn’t put up a production of this problematic show for so many decades. Tumblers clicked into place as I saw this anguished show pulled out of the context of the time it was written (1930s) and saw the history of white men stealing the tragedies of the Black community, appropriating Black musical traditions, and using them to make money for themselves. To his credit, Gershwin refused to allow non-Black actors to take any of the roles when it was performed. For the time, that was something, at least.
The dawning realization that Gershwin took liberties not only in Porgy and Bess, but also in his “jazz-influenced” compositions elsewhere, struck me hard as I watched. Oh, THIS is what cultural appropriation looks like in real time.
And just like that, my perspective changed from blind adoration to critical thinking. I don’t know if I’ll go back to listening to Gershwin like I once did, but I know I’ll spend more time considering the source of his knowledge and inspiration.
My grandmother’s coin bracelet held one last surprise. Two coins Uncle Joe had brought back from WWII were from Germany. A Deutsch Reich Reichspfennig from 1922, which predates Nazi control, and a 1935 5 Reichmark coin commemorating the one year anniversary of Nazi rule.
On this coin are embossed two swastikas.
The revulsion of knowing that I’d been wearing this bracelet unthinkingly, completely disengaged from the image I was casually wearing on my person sits hard in my gut. I am sure my uncle simply saw this as a memento of his time fighting the Nazis (though how that took him to Guatemala, I have no idea). I’m sure my grandmother only saw a gift from her son. I imagine people immediately post-WWII had no idea any vestiges of those hateful, evil act would take any kind of hold in today’s minds and hearts.
But here we are.
I plan to contact my jeweler friends to see if they’ll help me destroy this piece of ugly history. It cannot continue to exist in my home. I cannot keep blithely accepting historical images and thoughts and actions simply because that’s what we’ve always done, because it’s more comfortable to not think about it. Some of this ugliness in the world has too long been quietly waiting to resurface, left overlooked as simply part of how things were, and not critically examined for their part in the destruction of communities and families and cultures.
We’re not who we once were as a country, as a world asleep to the baseness and gluttony of ignorance. An awakening happened over the past two years during which much of the white population realized we have been blindly accepting as normal the true cruelty and horror visited on our coworkers and neighbors and —if we’re lucky enough to have them—friends. When they say “silence is complicity,” this is what they mean; I’ve sat by and accepted that Black people are targeted by authorities overwhelmingly, and that’s just how the world works. I’ve accepted that Asian people will be harassed and attacked, that disabled people won’t be hired for jobs they’re qualified for because of ignorance and hate, that women will always be under threat from men because men have never been and will never be taught to control themselves.
It’s what I accepted as true because I never stopped to look at it.
These past two years have brought a lifetime worth of assumptions into sharp focus. I’ve taken a good hard look at myself and what I believe and have aligned myself accordingly. It’s resulted in some losses, like my infantile acceptance that my grandfather gave me a coin two years after he died.
But mostly, through these painful conversations and forcing myself to sit still and listen to what’s truly being expressed, I’ve gained understanding, compassion, and strength of conviction.
That’s worth much more than any delusions about the past.