Lucky

In one of those remarkable cosmic moments, I found an American penny on the streets of suburban Melbourne a few months ago. I was most excited by this unusual find and henceforth deemed the penny "my lucky penny". I brought it home and put it in a very safe place...the top of my chest of drawers. I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, but I knew that I needed to hang on to it.

Several weeks later, the Handsome Australian and I were out in the City for dinner. He'd booked us a table at 2010's Pizzeria of the Year, +39. The Handsome Australian had dined there before and promised me charming Italian waiters, fine wine and simple but tasty pizza. The occasion? We were marking 12 years since the day we met back at the Embassy in Buenos Aires.

When we arrived at +39, our table wasn't ready so the host sent us to the casual bar across the road. We had a few drinks and then headed back across the street to claim our table. We were seated in the very back of the cozy little restaurant...somewhere between the pizza oven and the toilets. True to his description, the waiter arrived and began to explain the menu in the most beautiful broken English with a very heavy Italian accent. The Handsome Australian became "Bello" and I became "Bella". We ordered some wine and an antipasto platter to start and some pizzas to come later. "Perfetto," ordained the waiter as he disappeared to organise our wine.

The Handsome Australian then slowly reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a little box which he placed in front of me on the table. Taken by surprise, I looked searchingly at the little blue box with the white ribbon and wondered what could possibly be inside. After all, this was really more of an informal anniversary. It wasn't our wedding anniversary, just the day that we'd met all those years ago.

The waiter returned with our wines, saw the little blue box sitting in front of me and his eyes grew very wide. He placed the glasses down very quickly and rushed off waving his hands apologetically and repeating, "Scusi, scusi, scusi." Poor guy. I think he thought he'd interrupted a wedding proposal.

Keen to find out what was inside the box, I untied the ribbon and opened the lid. Inside I found this:

It was a beautiful sterling silver locket in the shape of a heart. The Handsome Australian indicated I should open it up to see what was inside. Intrigued, I did just that.

Inside the locket, I found a photograph of the two of us that had been taken in Hawaii earlier this year. While we were there, we'd celebrated our 10th year of marriage with a vow renewal ceremony. The photo was one of the two of us during the ceremony. It was such a lovely sentiment, but then the Handsome Australian told me to lift the photo out of the locket.

Why? I wondered. What else could possibly be in this locket? So as not to disappoint my dear husband and to cure my increasing curiosity, I did just as he instructed and lifted the photo gently out of the locket...

and there, sitting secretly behind our photo was my lucky penny. The Handsome Australian had realised how significant the finding of this penny had been for me and said he wanted me to have a safe place to keep it (hmm...I guess the top of the chest of drawers just wasn't cutting it). This way, according to him, I'll always have my lucky penny (and the USA) close to my heart.

The antipasto arrived. It was lackluster. Then there was pizza of some description and several glasses of wine followed by some sort of nuttella dessert pizza. All, truthfully, not that memorable. Or perhaps just eclipsed by the Handsome Australian himself.

Handsome and thoughtful. What a combination. I'm a lucky girl...in more ways than one.

A bit of luck...

A few weeks ago, our children spent the day with their grandparents and the Handsome Australian and I managed to duck out for a lovely lunch together. We hadn't planned on going to lunch necessarily, but when we realised our day's errands would take us past Carrington Road, Box Hill we couldn't resist. We both love a bit of Vietnamese food and Box Hill is one of a few Melbourne hot spots for Vietnamese cuisine. Carrington Road is home to quite a few tasty Vietnamese restaurants. Our favourite amongst the bunch is Indochine, but on this particular day, we thought we'd try something new. So we took at table upstairs at Tien Dat.

We spent the next little while in the sunlit dining room amongst families of all different sizes and cultures enjoying a lovely Sunday lunch. There were mixed spring rolls to start. A warm pot of tea to take off the chill of a winter's day. Then we stuffed ourselves with a lovely Chicken salad and Bun with Lemongrass Beef. With our tummies contented, we made our way downstairs to pay the bill and continue on our merry way.

As I stepped outside the doors of Tien Dat and began to make my way down the footpath along Carrington Rd, I looked down and saw this:

A coin lying on the footpath. I didn't think too much about it, but then I looked again.

To my surprise, on the ground in front of me lay not just any coin, but an American penny (1 cent piece). Immediately, my mind was transported back to my childhood and this little rhyme began playing in my head, "See a penny, pick it up. Then all day you'll have good luck." So I reached down and picked up this little penny and gleefully showed it to the Handsome Australian. "Look! Look what I've found here. It's an American penny! A real American penny! That's amazing! What is an American penny doing lying on the footpath in the middle of Box Hill?" Then I proceeded to sing the rhyme to the Handsome Australian. After which, I deemed this penny my "lucky penny". I read the date on the penny--1988. "Was 1988 a good year?" I asked the Handsome Australian. He seemed to think '88 was a decent year. Honestly, I thought to myself, what are the chances of me, an American, walking along this particular footpath at this particular time and finding this particular coin? It definitely seemed like destiny to me.

I tucked the penny in my pocket and when we picked our children up later in the day, I told them all about Mommy's new lucky penny. They were very impressed and wanted lucky pennies of their own. I told them sagely, "One day, your lucky penny will find you somewhere when you least expect it." After all, that's exactly what happened to me.