Tag: comfort

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Beyond Words

Heather hurts. A lot.

I wish I could say those words felt unfamiliar.

She’s had a lot of practice. Since her teen years, my wife has put together a list of conditions that sounds more like a pre-med syllabus. Crohn’s disease. Multiple sclerosis. Ankylosing spondylitis. By now, if we ever hit a Jeopardy! category called “Autoimmunity,” we’re sure to clean up on the Daily Double.

Yes, we joke about it sometimes. We’ve had to, the way Londoners in World War II sometimes joked about the Blitz. (“Last night’s raid hit Monkey Hill at the zoo. The morale of the monkeys remains unaffected.”) We’ve quipped about how Heather’s conditions mostly have the courtesy to take turns, flaring one at a time, or how catchy some of the medical terms would sound when set to music. In a situation you can’t control, sometimes absurdity helps get you through.

And sometimes nothing does.

The last few days have been part of that “nothing.”

Heather’s control is amazing. Most of the time, she carries on so well you wouldn’t realize anything’s wrong, at least, not until she went upstairs for an extended nap. So when the breakthroughs happen … well that’s when you know it’s truly awful.

That’s when 3 a.m. comes and sleep doesn’t.

Words become inadequate. Gestures of comfort feel small. All you can do is try to make it through the night and hope the next day brings more strength to face a painful world with. Sometimes it does. Sometimes you’re just fighting the battle again.

Even without a diagnosis, I think a lot of Longmont is fighting a similar battle right now.

We’ve all grown used to bad news in the world. Maybe too much so. When life keeps screaming in your ear on a regular basis, your mind has to push some of it away out of sheer survival, just to make it through the day.

And then it hits close to home. And you can’t not hear.

You can’t not feel the pain.

You know the story. By now, I think we all do. I don’t need to recount the mailbox shooting point for painful point, where one life was taken and at least two more forever changed. Some of us knew the people at the heart of it. Some had never heard their names before Wednesday.

But all of us are hurting now.

We don’t want things like this to be real. We want to understand why, as if that would forever keep the pain from returning.

But we don’t understand. We can’t.

And a sleepless 3 a.m. comes again.

I don’t have any miraculous words of wisdom here. I don’t think anyone does. Nothing that wouldn’t feel like trying to wrap a wound in tissue paper. The tools aren’t strong enough for the task.

All I can offer us is each other.

When the incomprehensible comes, whatever form it takes, we need someone there. The friend who can listen as the pain pours out in words. The partner whose gentle touch is a reminder that we don’t stand alone. The souls beyond our own who can walk with us and face the unimaginable together.

It may not be enough. But it’s more than we have alone.

And together, maybe we can reach the morning.

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I Want My Llama

Two hours beforehand, she’d been great. An hour before, she’d calmly gotten in the car, ready to go. But as we entered the office on D-is-for-Dentist Day, Missy finally decided she’d had enough.

“NO!”

We made promises. Offered hugs. Started up some favorite music.

“NO!”

The assistant made all the right moves. She admired Missy’s shoes, looked at her proudly offered comic book (a Darth Vader one), bantered with charm and patience. Missy liked her. Even responded a bit. But there was no way she was getting near that dentist’s chair or giving her new friend a long look inside her mouth.

“No!”

Finally, we took the Kenny Rogers route: know when to fold ‘em. But before the dentist began to discuss options and tactics for the next appointment, the assistant had one last card to play. After a moment’s departure, she stepped back in the room with someone new to meet … a white stuffed llama, complete with pink-and-white sparkles on its side.

Missy’s smile broadened. Her hands reached. And while it didn’t immediately turn defeat into victory like the final scene of a Star Wars movie, it planted a seed. Tension relaxed, nerves unclenched. The weird and scary became a little more normal and welcome – especially when it became clear that yes, the llama could go home in her overstuffed purse.

Today could only do so much. But tomorrow, just maybe, had gotten a little easier.

And if that isn’t a sum up of the last year or so, I don’t know what is.

Last week, when I bantered about Bernie memes, I mentioned how disrupting a familiar scene can make you see it with new eyes. But there’s a flip side to that, too. When many things are strange and unsettling, having even one “normal” touchpoint can ground you. The ordinary becomes a shield against the overwhelming.

It’s why stories of the fantastic, from King Arthur to Harry Potter, often begin with a hero who knows as little as we do.  They become our interpreter and our teacher, as we learn together about the bizarre new world that’s opening around us while sharing a common starting point of what’s supposed to be normal.

It’s why we reach for the familiar and soothing when a crisis hits – a favorite book or TV series, a friend who’s a good listener, or even a simple and mindless chore that can restore a feeling of control.

And it’s why, in a landscape like today’s, anything that gives a peek of the world before or after COVID-19 becomes a sign of hope.

It can be taken too far, of course. We all know that. Acting like everything’s normal in the midst of a wildfire or a flood or a worldwide pandemic is a good way to endanger yourself and everyone around you. So you take precautions, you learn the lessons, you adapt and survive and grow.

But survival includes the mind and the heart and the soul. If something comforts and restores you without causing harm – to yourself or someone else – that, too, can be an essential part of adapting. Not a leash to hold you back, but a bridge to carry you through.

Missy’s new friend has now joined the stuffed herd at home. Its softness still beckons, its sparkles still gleam. And while it won’t prevent the need for another dental visit, it can at least promise that there’s more than anxiety ahead.

The uncomfortable can’t be avoided. Not wholly. But with enough help, it can be endured.

Especially with a trauma llama close at hand.  

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A Moment Made

Some of life’s great truths have the staying power of Keith Richards and Bob Dylan combined. Which is to say, they’re not pretty, but there’s no getting rid of them.

One of these truths is that the new guy will always get the “fun” stuff.

A second is that the news always happens, regardless of any calendar dates or holidays.

Put these together, and you’ll understand why, about 20 years ago, I was heading into the newsroom of The Garden City Telegram on Christmas Day.

Mind you, the world wasn’t burning down – well, no more than it usually is, anyway. No apartment buildings had exploded, no planes had crashed on Main Street, no eccentric billionaires had decreed that every resident of southwest Kansas was getting a lifetime cash award. (Darn it.) But there would still be a newspaper on Dec. 26, and so the rookie got to come in and keep an ear on the police scanner in case anything happened … and to work on a short feature in case nothing did.

Appropriately enough, I spent the time talking to my colleagues of the moment – namely, the others who by choice or circumstance found themselves working on the holiday. Truckers. Ambulance workers. Police officers. All the folks who quietly keep the gears moving, even when life seems to come to a halt.

For most, it wasn’t a day lost, but a day postponed. There would be time to celebrate, to observe, to enjoy … once the job was done. A time claimed rather than found, a moment to be made rather than simply reached.

I still appreciate that.

After all, it’s a lesson Heather and I came to know very well.

***

Christmas Eve in Garden City. Our first as a married couple. A friend had invited us to a candlelight service, one of Heather’s favorite things in the world – only for one of her chronic illnesses to have a brief flare-up that evening. We didn’t have to go to an emergency room, but we clearly weren’t going anywhere else, either.

Young husbands do many things out of desperation. Which is how I happened to sit at our piano that night by candlelight, playing carols from the hymnal and reading appropriate sections of the Christmas story.  Since Heather couldn’t go to the candlelight service, I brought the service to her.

We weren’t where we meant to be. We weren’t where we wanted to be. But together, we made the moment.

And a memory that still endures for both of us.

***

We imbue dates with a lot of power. That can create a sort of magic where it feels like everyone around you is acting in a common purpose, to a common goal. But if for some reason you’re disconnected from the revelry, that approaching holiday can become awkward instead of wonderful, something that everyone else gets to enjoy while you stand to one side.

And like that, “Christmas is coming” starts to sound less like a carol and more like a threat.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Christmas isn’t about Dec. 25. It never was. It’s about setting a time aside to recognize unexpected joy and quiet love, to treasure those who are closest to your heart and focus on what’s truly important. To see those around us as people deserving of kindness (even if they do have horrible taste in sweaters).

That’s a moment that can be claimed at any time.

Or even at every time.

May that moment always be with you, whenever you choose to make it. May it comfort you with a warmth that will last and endure.

If we’re truly fortunate, it might even outlast Keith Richards.

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Burrowing In

As I brought Missy to her bedroom, all the familiar comforts were waiting. Her Hogwarts pillows. Her bedtime story on the nightstand. And 95 pounds of midnight-colored canine, sprawled across the carpet.

Sigh. “Hi, Blake.”

Big Blake hasn’t always been part of the bedtime routine. In the past, our English Lab preferred to camp out in the master bedroom with Heather, waiting for her attention to wander so he could sneak off and raid the Christmas trash. But sometime last June and July, when the fireworks turned into a Normandy-level barrage, Blake decided it was time to relocate.

For a while he hid under my desk, which was a little like trying to fit a genie back into its lamp and about as miraculous. So after a while, he chose the comforts of Missy’s room instead. Even after the fireworks stopped, he’d plunk himself down, just in time for storytime.

I can hear everyone saying “Awww!” And yes, it makes a rather cute sight. But after the book gets put away and the last good-night hugs are shared, there remains the Herculean task of getting Blake to leave the room.

“C’mon, buddy.” Pause. “No, really, it’s time, let’s go.” Pause. “Blake ….”

Leaving the door open at night isn’t really an option, since it’s harder for Missy to sleep. Leaving them alone together is a little like leaving the Marx Brothers with a cream pie and a society matron close to hand. Lifting him up and out … I did mention this was 95 pounds of Lab, right?

So we coax. We call. We lay trails of food to lure him or ring the doorbell to get him charging out. We always feel a little bad about it, since we know it’s a comfort spot for him. But sooner or later, he needs to move.

I think more than a few of us can identify with that.

There has been a lot going on over the last year or so – enough that I sometimes wonder if the Cubs broke the space-time continuum with their World Series win. Hurricanes and wildfires. Torches and Nazis. And of course, the political becoming perpetual, with every day seeming to bring a new issue to discuss … no, debate … all right, argue.

Now, I worked in the media long enough to know that we’re never completely at Condition Green. We live in a world where we can instantly know every crisis and feel pain from half a world away. Not every alarm bell is necessary, but sorting out the ones that must be dealt with is a non-trivial task, even in the best of times.

Even so, the volume has been creeping up as surely as Missy’s stereo. And it’s being felt. I regularly see people who just want to disengage and break off from it all. Turn off the TV, put down the paper, clear off anything on the Facebook wall that isn’t puppies and flowers. Find a good bedroom at storytime, and plunk down on the carpet, away from everything else.

I understand. And to a certain extent, it’s necessary. No one can battle all the time, everyone needs a time and place where they can pull back, regroup, and recover. Having a space, online or off, that’s a “No Politics” zone can be essential to sanity.

But while it’s a great place to visit, we can’t live there.

In a free society, politics is everyone’s business. In an interconnected society, no decision leaves anyone untouched. And in this society, pulling back from a situation because it’s stressful doesn’t mean the situation will go away – it just means that you’ve removed any voice you might have had about how to deal with it.

And the voices that stay are not guaranteed to have your best interests at heart.

Yes, rest. Recover. Care for yourself, renew your joy and your strength. No job can be 24 hours, including our job as citizens. But remember that recuperation is different from surrender. Sooner or later, however comfy the place, we have to move back to where we need to be.

Trust me. You’ll be dog-gone glad you did.

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Watching From the Shadows

Missy and I had been sitting on the couch when we heard the jingle.

“Shhh,” I said. “I think she reappeared.”

I set my tablet down, looked behind the furniture. Sure enough, a pair of small eyes gleamed back. After a long day of invisibility, Cupid had deigned to show herself again.

Well, sort of. You can’t rush a lady.

Cupid is the visiting cat of a visiting relative. A grand-and-tiny feline of 13, she’s also a new adoptee, greeting her changed environment with a mixture of curiosity and uncertainty. That especially includes our muscular English Labrador Blake, who has greeted the new arrival with a mix of enthusiasm (“Hey! New friends!”) and jealousy (“Hey! This is MY house!”). She in return has greeted him with a mixture of concealment (“I’m not here …”) and ferocity (“…. but my claws are, buddy, so don’t come any closer, OK?”).

Note to self: When a 95-pound dog tries to mix it up with a tiny puff of fur, don’t bet against the puff of fur.

This is familiar ground, though it’s been quite a while. When I was a kid, my sister Leslie introduced Twinkle Lumas Rochat to our home, named for the blaze of orange between her eyes that matched a mark on her mother, Starface. Twinkle remained in the house as an uncrowned queen for 17 years, learning the arcane secrets of paper bag, bits of ribbon, and Christmas tree tinsel.

And, of course, Max.

Max was the newer arrival, a bearded collie who loved the world. It was a match made in … well, somewhere. Like most beardies, Max had never heard of personal space; like most cats, Twinkle believed the entire house was hers.

On the first day Max came home, Twinkle disappeared into my sister Carey’s closet and refused to leave.

The script started out as Upstairs, Downstairs – as in, Max hadn’t yet mastered staircases, so upstairs and downstairs were the perfect places for Twinkle to hide. When he made the breakthrough, it became the biggest shock in Twinkle’s life and the start of a new episode, straight out of the old Road Runner show: one bark, one yowl, and two furry bodies streaking up or down the steps in hot pursuit. (Anvil not included.)

It took a long time, but things eventually reached a detente. And then some. It wasn’t uncommon for someone quietly entering a room to notice a certain pup and a certain kitty sleeping within paw’s length of each other. Once they realized they’d been seen, of course, official relations resumed, beginning with a high-speed chase, but we all knew the truth.

Each had made their peace, without compromising who they were. And they’d made something better doing it.

That’s not an easy thing to do for anybody, furry or not.

We live in a world of changes. Not all of those changes are comfortable. Some we welcome, some we fight, some we try to accommodate if we can.

But the one thing we can’t do is ignore them and pretend they’re not there. Oh, it’s tempting. And there can be a bit of helpful respite in pulling back to reassess, recover, and figure out what to do next. But as Twinkle discovered, hiding out only works for so long before the change finds you anyway. Then you have to figure out what to do next.

That doesn’t mean surrender. But it does mean understanding what’s happened, and then working out what the next step needs to be.

Meanwhile, we’ve got a guest to attend to.

Somewhere around here, anyway.

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Words of Honor

“He wrapped himself in quotations – as a beggar would enfold himself in the purple of Emperors.”

— Rudyard Kipling

 

Slowly but surely, the words are claiming the wall.

Muhammad Ali watches from one point, Saint Paul from another. Novelists share space with masters of social media. It’s a small crowd right now, but I know how quickly it will grow, piling wit onto wisdom onto timeless endurance.

I ought to know. We’ve been here before.

And as before, it’s more comforting than a few rows of taped computer paper has any right to be.

 

“In the garden of literature, the highest and the most charismatic flowers are always the quotations.”

— Mehmet Murat ildan

 

It started, as it often does, with Heather’s health. My wife is a lovely, funny, creative and tough-minded person. But she also tends to attract chronic illness the way a car accident attracts rubberneckers. Years ago, before we met, it was Crohn’s disease. A couple of years after we married, ankylosing spondylitis came along for the ride. Endometriosis used to be part of the mix, and we’ve never been quite sure if lupus was milling about in the crowd or not.

Lately, as some of you have read here, there’s been something new. We’re still pinning down all the details – which is a bloodless way of saying that we’ve been going through a lot of sleepless nights and painful days trying to figure out what in blue blazes is going on.

One morning I had just checked in with my boss to mention that I was going to have to work from home – again – in order to help Heather through the day. She sent back her best wishes for the struggle – and a few words from Muhammad Ali for comfort.

“The fight is won or lost far away from witnesses,” the words read, “behind the lines, in the gym and out there on the road, long before I dance under those lights.”

And all of a sudden, I remembered.

 

“Have you ever observed that we pay much more attention to a wise passage when it is quoted, than when we read it in the original author?”

— Philip Gilbert Hamerton

 

The last time something like this happened, back in Kansas, Heather had had to spend far too much time in the bathroom. (Having Crohn’s in combination with severe back pain will tend to do that.) So, to make life a little more bearable – or at least entertaining – I started to paper the opposite wall with quotes.

Like many writers, I’ve always been a fan of the well-chosen word, whether from prophets or Muppets. A good quote is a quick moment in life when your mind suddenly blinks and then laughs, or winces, or nods “Yes – yes, that’s exactly how it is.” They’ve decorated my college papers, my desks, even my email at work.

And now, they decorated my bathroom. Heather found the first one and I quickly gave it a lot of brothers and sisters. Soon, you couldn’t drop a hand towel without coming across the latest aphorism or wisecrack.

Now, we seemed to be in a similar place. Maybe it was time for a similar remedy. This particular illness was keeping her confined to bed for much of the day, so I picked a readily visible bedroom wall and went to work.

Some space went to encouragement. (“We must live lives of unstoppable hope.” – Stant Litore.)

Some was claimed by humorous sympathy. (“I’m not clumsy. It’s just that the floor hates me, the tables and chairs are bullies, and the wall gets in the way.” – Liza Mahone.)

And some, inevitably, went to doctor snark. (“I firmly believe that if the whole materia medica could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind and all the worse for the fishes.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.)

I don’t know. Maybe it’s not doing anything but using up ink and Scotch tape. But maybe, in its own small way, it helps. It’s a way to bring life over the walls, to remind us that someone’s been there before, that there’s more to think about than “Ow, ow, ow.”

Maybe, to borrow from Miguel de Cervantes, these “short sentences drawn from long experience” are better medicine than we know. I hope so. I really do.

Sticks and stones can break our bones. But words can maybe heal us.

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Goodbye, Dude

The Dude abides no more.

Picture a small bird. No, smaller than that. A zebra finch, about the size of your thumb, lively with song, gray with age and deaf as a post.

That was The Dude. Yes, was.

I found him in the cage Wednesday night. Just five hours earlier, he’d been his usual self, hopping and flittering and singing that unique burble that only a finch possesses, somewhere between a running faucet and a squeaky toy.

He wasn’t gone yet. Not quite. But he was clearly on the threshold, his small body curled in the corner, barely moving, barely breathing.

Heather couldn’t stand for him to be alone in the dark. We brought his cage to our bedroom and sat up with him. We promised if he was still lingering in the morning, we’d go to the vet and do the gentle thing.

It wasn’t necessary. In the wee hours, he turned once on the bottom of his case, just enough to notice. And then he made the final flight, the one without wings.

Nine years had come to a quiet end.

If you’ve not kept birds, you may not realize how uncommon that is. Most zebra finches last between five and seven years as pets. There have been older ones, sure, but even if The Dude wasn’t quite George Burns, he was sure as heck Christopher Plummer.

Maybe a bit of Harrison Ford, too. After all, he did get a ride in the mouth of Big Dog Blake and lived to tell the tale.

Amazing, in a lot of ways.

But then, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. If there are two things that our families do well, it’s birds and long-lived pets.

The birds come from Heather’s side. She and her sister Jaimee are the Bird Ladies, embracing anything in feathers. Before The Dude’s passing, our informal aviary comprised three parakeets, two zebra finches, one society finch and a cockatiel whose shrieks could wake Rip Van Winkle. No partridges in pear trees, but I’m sure it’s a matter of time.

The pets that won’t quit, meanwhile, are a hardy Rochat family tradition. Growing up, I had a dog that made it to 13, a cat that made it to 17 — heck, I had a goldfish that lasted around 13 years. It didn’t happen with every pet, every time, but it was strong enough to make a trend.

Put ’em together, and you get a heck of a flock.

And also one where it’s really hard to say goodbye.

It’s human to assume that what has been always will be. That only gets stronger when a gentle soul does indeed keep going day after day and year after year. Maybe they’re a little slower or a touch more careful over time, but they’re still there. Still wonderful. Still loving.

And then, one day, that love leaves.

And so does a little of you.

I wouldn’t trade the time for anything. No way. But deep roots pull harder when they’re finally torn free. Even the smallest of bodies — a finch, a gerbil, a horned toad — can leave a hole the size of the Grand Canyon.

The hole will be filled, with memories and tears. But it never will be what it was before. Neither will you.

And on balance, I think that’s a good thing.

I am a better person than I would have been without Mitzi the dog, Twinkle the cat, and a host of others, right down to the tiniest Dude. And I know I’m not alone in that feeling. There’s a care that only animals can teach, as they magnify the best and worst you choose to show them.

And if it hurts to leave, you probably did it right. It’s a hard comfort. But it’s also an assurance that you touched a heart to a heart and brought both back full.

That’s a treasure beyond words. And as I think on that, I realize that I got the first sentence of this piece wrong.

Down where it counts, The Dude abides.

And he always will.

 

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Lost in Boston

They’re painful. Uncomfortable. Three words that I’ve hated saying for years.

No, not “Tulowitzki’s injured again.”

Try instead “I don’t know.”

As a little kid, I hated saying it to my sister Leslie. So much so that when she asked a question, I would make something up rather than admit I didn’t know the answer.

I still hate saying it now, as a journalist. Though at least my efforts to avoid the deadly phrase now involve frantic phone calls and pushed deadlines rather than outright fiction.

“I don’t know.” Hard words to admit to.

But really, no other words will do this week.

Not after Boston.

***

Like a lot of people, I was in the middle of my work day when the Boston Marathon bombs went off. I’d just finished chatting with an organizer about Longmont’s “hackathon” — a fun story, one that made you feel good – when I glanced at my laptop and saw the news.

Boom. Boom.

Stunned.

Over the first few hours it felt, not like 9/11, but like the old Olympic bombing in Atlanta. It was a similar venue, a similar scale. And with no one racing forward to take the credit, it had a similar, desperate search for answers.

What really happened? Who would do this? And why?

In Atlanta, our need for answers became so great that an innocent man got swept up in them. This time, the embarrassment came not from having the wrong name, but from having no name at all, as CNN jumped on rumors of an arrest – rumors that proved to be as solid as a campaign promise.

As I write this, a zillion theories compete for time. I have my own. If they were any more solid than the rest, I’d put them here.

After all, things are supposed to make sense. Aren’t they?

I don’t know.

***

Turn it around. What do we know?

We know people were hurt. Were killed.

We know that Boston is nearer than we ever imagined it could be.

We know that people need help. Need healing. Need peace.

Most of all, perhaps, we know that people are answering the call.

And how!

Whoever set the bombs, they’ve been outnumbered. From the first moments, there were people running toward the explosions, running to do what they could.

A Florida orthopedic surgeon, Dr. John Cowin, had been in the crowd to watch his daughter. He leaped a barrier at the race to tend the wounded.

A group of 20 active-duty soldiers, there to honor lost comrades, had just finished walking the course. They obliterated a fence and started hurrying to remove debris from victims.

A collection of runners who had just finished running a grueling 26 miles-and-change, immediately ran two more. Just far enough to reach the nearest hospital, and give blood.

I’m sure it doesn’t feel like a lot to them. It never does at the time. But that multitude of small moments, candle flame on candle flame, grows brilliant when gathered together. Almost blinding.

These are the ones who deserve to be remembered.

Not the givers of pain. But the fighters of it.

***

In time, there will be a name. I’m confident of that. In time, some of our questions will have answers. Not all. Never all. But maybe enough.

But that will happen in its time. Not with the speed of a CSI episode, but at the methodical pace that real police work finds. They, too, are lighting candles, though the wicks are slow to kindle.

I’m human. I want to learn more, too. What I don’t know still troubles me.

But what I do know – what I’ve seen, what I’ve heard – has provided more comfort than I could have expected.

They’re still hard words. But ultimately, powerless ones.

No. We don’t know. But we’re learning. And there’s a whole lot of people at our shoulder as we discover it together.

This, we know.

 

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Changelessness

It’s official. Canada is discarding all common cents.

No, that’s not a typo. Our neighbors to the north recently announced that they’re getting rid of all pennies in circulation. Any spent will get sent off to be melted down; once they’re gone, prices will be adjusted up or down to the nearest five cents to compensate.

“It’s a piece of currency that lacks currency,” Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said during hearings, noting that each one-cent coin costs 1.6 cents to make.

It’s not a bad idea. It’ll save a little in the budget and probably some pocket linings, too.

And if history’s any guide, it will never, ever catch on here.

It’s not that there aren’t people here who want to see the penny go (and occasionally, the dollar bill as well). When I worked the cash register at City News, it was easily the most annoying coin to keep track of. Like most businesses, we scattered the copper-colored coins into a “take a penny, leave a penny” jar to even out the change, effectively rounding prices up or down anyway.

And these days, there aren’t that many people who use cash, period. When even a pizza delivery can be put on a credit card, you know that bills and coins have pretty much fled the battlefield except for vending machines and dancers named Passion Flower.

Even so, trust me on this. Little Lincoln’s got some staying power.

There’s two reasons. The smaller one is that there just isn’t a lot of need. Sure, pennies cost more to make than their face value, and nickels are even worse. But dimes and quarters more than absorb that cost, and coins re-circulate enough times to make that a moot issue, anyway.

The bigger reason? Simple. When it comes to money, Americans are downright stodgy.

You know what I mean.

Remember the jokes and the head-shaking when the redesigned bills came out? (I still think Andrew Jackson looks like he lost a battle with a hair dryer, personally.)

Remember the cold reception to the Sacajawea dollar coin, and the Susan B. Anthony before it?

Frankly, the only alteration to the currency that I can remember drawing a smile was the state quarter series. And most people I knew viewed those as collectibles rather than currency – at least, until their next Diet Coke fix came calling.

But at least we have changed the currency before, if slowly. Now imagine the reaction to withdrawing it.

No one wants to to be the politician that killed Lincoln a second time.

Nonsensical? Maybe. But legitimate. In a weird way, the currency’s become a touchstone, something that rarely changes in a world that changes constantly. It’s familiar enough to inspire trivia or even tasteless jokes. (“Why does Lincoln on the penny face right when all other coins face left? You let a crazy actor get behind you just once and you never get over it .”) It’s even enduring enough to be a minor history project – my sisters used to tape pennies to a sheet of paper, one for each year they could find, going back decades.

Yes, that was one heavy sheet of paper. Thanks for asking.

Maybe touchstones like that aren’t such a bad thing. Think of the orange Broncos jersey that just got put back into circulation. Gaudy? Maybe. But it was also unmistakeably, uniquely us. Lacking it was like missing a tooth. Bringing it back just felt right.

And maybe that’s all the defense a penny coin or a dollar bill needs. It just feels right. When the feeling stops, then maybe we’ll be ready to change our tune.

Or at least to tune our change.