About two weeks ago I was standing in line at the bank, waiting my turn in the crowded lunch break rush. A few people ahead of me, holding up the line, was a girl I would guess to be between nine and twelve years old and her dad. They were holding up the line because she was painstakingly counting out change on the counter and then she gathered it up to bring to the teller, clutching it with both hands. The bank teller watched her approach with trepidation and then a bit of a resigned look as the girl put all her coins on the counter with a clatter. She watched the teller begin to count everything out. At some point her dad came up the counter to chat for a minute but then he stepped back, purely there as an observer. The teller printed out the receipt and handed it to the girl who looked at it with what I can only describe as awe, excitement, and joy that adults over the age of 25 have to work hard not to be resentful of. Her dad was asked to come back up to the counter to sign on the account and the teller asked the girl what she was saving for and she replied, with a huge smile on her face, “I’m saving up for astronomy camp this summer!!” The girl kept grinning at her receipt and then looked up at her dad and said, “Can you believe it? There’s $159.00 in here already!” She gripped that paper in one hand and kept smiling at it the whole time she was walking out of the bank with her dad.
This is one of my top moments from the year so far and I have been thinking about it all week. All last week. All this week. I think about it when I’m at work stuck in the paperwork cycle of doom. I’ve thought about it on walks with my dogs. I’ve thought about it when mulling over the coming year of 2023. I’ve thought about it while reading a book. I’ve thought about it in the context of trying to relay what it felt like, but in writing. It was just this little slice of humanity that struck my heart and it was 15 minutes while standing in line at the bank. She was so excited, that little girl. Proud to take her dimes and quarters and pennies up to the front counter. Thrilled to be saving up for astronomy camp. Ecstatic to share her accomplishment with her dad. It was this small glimpse into the innocence of what small steps mean in a context I haven’t thought about in a long time.
You know how it is when you’re an adult, living in our current time of mighty bills and shrinking wages, there is no time that you aren’t thinking about how you're going to have to work more to earn more to make it to the end. How saving for anything that brings you joy is always at the bottom of the priority list, which, let’s be honest, if joy even makes it onto the priority list. Yet, here was someone who was quite literally counting every penny towards her dream and thrilled about even the most minuscule signs of progress towards it. I mean, you and I both know that the cost of astronomy camp could be astronomical (pun intended) depending on where it’s located, yet the savings have to have a starting point somewhere…right?
It was a gentle, but direct, reminder that these things that we want, that I want, that you want, are worth working towards, even when it’s just pennies and dimes at a time. That every cliched “shoot for the moon, if you fall at least you’ll land among the stars” quote doesn’t seem so cliche when it’s set against the backdrop of someone giving pennies to the bank and announcing that she’s GOING to camp this summer. I’m going to hold the image in my mind for a long time of her walking out of the bank beaming at her receipt and telling her dad:
“Can you believe it??”
XO,
Elea