FEMALE ON THE FLOOR! Pennies from Heaven

Tonight it’s easy to write about Panama. It’s raining in our desert here in New Mexico. In Panama, it was always raining. Since I was on the Pacific side, there was much less rain to deal with. Our rains came at a scheduled time each day it seemed. A nice rain would last about 15-20 minutes, then the sun would come out strong again and the shower would quit. This occurred several times a day during the rainy season. We still had rains during the dry season, which was six months of the year. On the Atlantic side, it was a different story. The rains were endless. Not the ideal situation for an Engineer Battalion.

After Noriega was captured and things got back on an even keel, our Battalion went to work re-building.

It must have been sometime in March that we went back to PML Charley. Charley meant a whole lot of things. It meant the troops could visit the Class Six store again, we could travel in Panama (with restrictions) and it meant that dependents could be brought to the country.

I went home on leave after we were on Charley for just a short time. During leave, Doug and I decided that we would give it another go on us. We were still legally married, even though we’d been separated for three years. When I got back to Fort Kobbe, I put in the paperwork requesting orders for Doug and Aaron to come there. With that, my obligation in country changed from 12 months to 36 months.

I’ll never forget the night Doug and Aaron arrived. They flew into Torrijos Airport, which was over an hour away from Ft. Kobbe. I’d arranged for one of the guys I worked with at DSU to take me in his POV (privately owned vehicle) to meet them at the airport, but alas, he was nowhere to be found when the time came.

This was back in the day. No Internet (well, it had become available for an extraordinary fee, but WE didn’t have it). And this was way before cell phones. Heck, in Panama, we were happy enough if the phones worked. I was worried about Doug and Aaron waiting on me there at the airport. I was pulled between getting a cab and going there to the airport, thereby taking a chance on missing them there on post should they arrive. The airport was barely in the “safe” area. I finally decided to wait it out.

I was three stories up, hanging out over a barracks window when I saw a white cowboy hat running, yes, that’s exactly what it looked like there in the dark, a cowboy hat with legs and cowboy boots running down the sidewalk in Ft. Kobbe. As soon as my brain processed the cowboy hat (not often seen in Panama!), my eyes saw the cutest little guy running beside the hat, holding something up in his hands. I could hear that distinctive voice. Even then, my son was loud. Mostly he gets it from the loud hat that was next to him there, running, laughing, then turning around to look up at me as I hollered, “There! There they are! I knew they’d make it!”

I flew down the three flights of stairs and ran out to grab up Aaron and Doug. We kept interrupting each other with stories and questions as we walked across 508th’s training field and climbed the steps to what we thought at the time, would be the greatest adventure of our lives.

The thing that Aaron had in his hand was a tall plastic cup from some fast food restaurant, Dairy Queen, or something like that. The cup was about three quarters full of pennies that Aaron had been saving. In our excitement over the reunion, he set his pennies down and went off and left them.

After most of the questions and interjections were handled, one of us remembered the cup of pennies. When I asked Aaron if he wanted us to go look over at 536th and see if they were there, he shook his head no.

He loved his new home, his parents together. He’d never had an upstairs bedroom before. He was content and had found all he needed it seemed. We tucked him into Mickey Mouse sheets and watched our eight year old drift off to sleep, still smiling.

When I went to formation the next morning, I checked it out to see if the pennies were still there, but of course, they were not.

For years when I’ve found pennies on the street, I’ve called them 'Pennies from Heaven'. I never pick up a penny from heaven anymore that I don’t think of that cup of pennies left behind by Aaron. In his excitement, Aaron nearly always left something behind.

He always did.