I keep a mason jar of pennies on the kitchen windowsill, beside a little succulent that refuses to die. The jar catches the afternoon light, and the coins glow like tired embers, copper softening toward brown. I’ve meant to roll them, to turn them into something useful, but the truth is I like them where they are. They look like a small congregation, a crowd of ordinary folks who showed up and stayed.

Recently, I read that the U.S. Mint placed its final order for penny blanks this spring, and by early 2026 new pennies will stop rolling off the presses. It costs more than three and a half cents to make each one-cent coin, and the math no longer adds up. On paper, the case is strong. In the heart, the penny still carries weight.

I learned that weight as a child at the gas station counter, palms damp with coins and a crumpled dollar. My mother taught me to count out loud. Nickels first, then dimes, then those stubborn little ones that never seemed to add up right until they did. The cashier would smile and wait, and in that pause I learned value, not the kind that prints on a tag, but the kind that grows in you when you do the small thing well. The penny trained patience. It taught me how the last bit matters.

There’s the smell of copper too, the faint scent that clings to your fingers after you fish up a handful from a jar. It’s the smell of wishing wells and church offering plates, of paper routes and summer chores, of couch cushions and parking meters that still take change. A penny is the sound of childhood loose in a pocket, the rattle at the bottom of your purse, the clink that says you didn’t have much to spare, but you gave anyway.

When I hear that the penny may leave, I think of every act that looks inefficient to the world but changes a life in secret: a neighbor who checks in with soup, a teacher who writes one more note on a paper, a coach who lingers after practice to ask the right question. None of it scales, none of it trends, yet add it up and you get a life shaped by kindness, one cent at a time.

We keep reaching for big answers. We should. There are problems that require heavy equipment and deep pockets. But the penny reminds me that small isn’t the opposite of important. Small is how anything begins. Small is how we train our hands and aim our hearts. Small adds up.

I remember the jars in church foyers labeled for families who had hit hard times. Pennies were the loudest in those jars. They chattered when they fell. They made music. People gave what they had, and the smallest gift still made a sound that could be heard. I think of that every time I see a penny on the sidewalk. There was a season in my life when I would have stopped to pick it up. I still might.

Even as the mint prepares to close this chapter, the Treasury says existing pennies will remain legal tender. They will stay in our drawers and glove compartments for years, slowly fading out as they wear down and disappear. It’s a slow goodbye, one that slips quietly into memory.

Progress smooths the rough edges of our days, but sometimes in doing so, it steals their texture. I’d like to keep a little friction in the system, a reminder that time isn’t wasted when it’s given to each other. Maybe that’s what the penny always was, a tiny ledger of attention. You paused to count. You learned to notice. And then you learned to give, even when the amount felt like nothing at all. In a culture that shouts for more, the penny whispered, start where you are.

I’ve always loved the phrase “giving someone your two cents.” It’s a small offering, a thought shared, a way of saying, “I was here, and I care.” Maybe that’s part of the penny’s legacy too. It gave everyone, no matter how little they had, a way to join in, to take part, to offer something of themselves to the world around them. That’s grace in small change, the quiet power of simple kindness, the way it circulates through lives unseen, leaving its shine on hearts rather than hands.

If the end comes, I’ll leave my jar on the windowsill. Not as a protest, but as a practice. A penny for each prayer I didn’t have words for. A penny for every apology that came late but still came. A penny for the quiet choices no one will thank you for, the ones that hold a household together and keep a community kind. I’ll drop them in and listen for the note, a soft metallic ring that says this mattered.

And when sunlight slides across the kitchen, catching the glass and turning those tired embers gold, I’ll remember how value is transformed by the light that hits it. Not by price, not by math, but by meaning.

May we keep our jars of small things, reminders that even what seems insignificant still glows with grace.

Until they do.