A Bag of Coins

Every summer she took me somewhere. Now I take her

Jul 28, 2026

Every summer when I was a kid, my mom took my brother and me to the CNE.

If you’re not from Toronto, the CNE is kind of like our version of the state fair. For about three weeks at the end of every summer, a stretch of the exhibition grounds downtown fills up with rides, games, and food, and then it’s gone again until next year.

We’d drive to Yorkdale mall, park the car, and take the subway downtown. That ride was the best part because of the anticipation. Toronto felt enormous to me back then. A place far away, loud, a little dangerous, full of sounds and smells that didn’t exist where we lived in the suburbs. I was ten years old, and going into the city was the biggest thing that happened to me all year.

We always went armed with a bag of loose coins.

My mom used to keep the household change in an old tofu tub from the Chinese supermarket, washed out and reused like everything else in our house. Once a year she emptied the whole thing into a raggedy white plastic bag from the grocery store. Loonies, toonies, quarters. For anyone reading outside of Canada, a loonie is our one-dollar coin and a toonie is our two-dollar coin.

For whatever reason, I remember the bag always having a hole in it. So she’d double bag it.

I was always so embarrassed by that bag. Every year I’d fuss at her about it. Why not a pouch? Why not a purse? Why not anything remotely presentable? She never had a good answer. The answer was that the bag worked.

Once we were through the gates, I didn’t care about the bag at all.

My brother and I were on our best behaviour the day of the CNE. Not any other day of the year. Just that one. Because the deal was simple. We got to run the bag dry.

Balloon popping. Dice betting. Bottle lifting. Frog throwing. The basketball game with the rims up at 14 feet where you have to hit two in a row, which nobody has ever done.

We ran that bag dry every summer.

A million things happened in my childhood.

I remember this one the most.

Not because it was the biggest. Because it happened again and again. Same month, same parking lot, same subway ride, same bag. Once a year, every year, for years.

The things that stuck to me weren’t the rare things. They were the ones that repeated.

Then there’s a day that comes for you. I don’t know when mine was. It’s a sneaky day.

But somewhere along the way, I switched places, and I became my mom’s guardian.

Lately when we travel together, it’s been my mom and her sister, my aunt. Two of them, one of me. Two siblings, a little unsure in a place that’s too big and too loud, following the one person who’s supposed to know where we’re going.

My mom is almost 70. She’s the one who waits to hear the plan now, and asks around springtime what we’re doing this summer.

I’m 37 and still in the middle of figuring my own life out. I got put in charge anyway.

This summer we went to Europe again. France, Monaco, and Italy to be exact.

I’ve never been on a helicopter before.

Neither has my mom.

I’d never been to Monaco either.

Neither has my mom.

We also chartered a boat out to the Amalfi Coast. We docked at Amalfi & Positano, ate, walked, and swam in water that doesn’t look real in photos and doesn’t look real in person either.