Appreciation

“All right, that's it for today, guys. Big test on Probability Monday. Hope you’ve all started studying!”

Nearly everyone in my Algebra 2 class groaned. Then, one by one, the face-filled boxes began blinking out of existence. Some murmured goodbyes before vanishing, but most simply disappeared. At this point, (nearly a year into remote learning) a wordless blip was all I’d come to expect, and I didn’t take it personally. It had been a tough year for everyone.

I logged out, looked around the room and sighed. Boxes upon boxes upon more boxes. Piles of papers. Piles of dirty, rusted or greasy machine parts. My dad was a hoarder, plain and simple, and for the last week I’d been drowning in his fifty-years-in-the-making collection.

The worst part? I couldn’t even yell at him for it… because he was gone.

A week away from being eligible for the vaccine, my dad started showing symptoms.

“Don’t worry about me,” he’d dry-coughed into the phone just before leaving for the hospital. “I’m fine.”

He wasn’t. Seventy-six years old. Cancer survivor. Diabetic. It was just… too much.

As a teacher, I’d already been vaccinated, so I dropped my two boys off with their father and drove the six hours to my parents house. Mom and I said goodbye to Dad through one of the iPads the hospital provided. There was no way to know if he really heard the professions of love we directed towards him. Considering the deafening thrumb of the HVAC filtering air in the background, his heavy sedation and the ventilator tube shoved down his throat… I’m guessing he didn’t. I lied to my mom about that, of course. I assured her Dad felt us right there with him the whole time.

My father was an absent-minded professor. He was an analog genius in a digital world. If it had gears and a compressor, he could fix it. If it had a computer screen, it was the cross and holy water to his vampiric intolerance of newfangled techno-gobbledygook.

Still, it was men like John Lunz that reminded the world how much of itself still ran on moving metal parts. The house, despite the decades of moldering debris I was unearthing, smelled sweetly of flowers. There had been no funeral and at least half the families in town sent bouquets here to the house. There wasn't a person or business within fifty miles that hadn't had the day saved by my dad at some point. Broken water-heaters, broken thermostats; Broken mowers or blowers or clippers; Stalled cars, Stalled plumbing - Dad could fix it all.

You’d think a man of such practical and marketable talent would’ve done well for himself in life, yes? No. Unfortunately, the only skill set more foreign to my father than ‘newfangleism’, was finance. If someone in town could not afford to pay him, Dad wouldn’t make them. If someone in town could afford to pay him, Dad wouldn’t make them. As a result, Mom was left with very little savings, and plenty of medical bills.

I closed my laptop and turned my attention back to the boxes and piles. There had been nothing my dad felt it a good idea to get rid of. Fortunately, this afternoon a local junker/collector was coming to haul away a good portion of the metal and hardware. He’d agreed to pay top dollar for parts and tools, even saying he’d give us twenty dollars for my dad’s worthless desktop computer.

I began pulling boxes out from beneath the sofa. One was filled with dozens of red leather books - my Dad’s journal collection. I smiled. The ‘Dad Chronicals’ I’d called them during my surly teenage years. My dad had meticulously kept a journal for most of his life, always writing in these small red notebooks. The newest one was still in my parents room right now.

I sat on the sofa and grabbed one of the books, labeled “1994”. I flipped through it, not really reading the entries but noticing that some were as short as two or three words while others appeared to be lengthy descriptions of my dad’s day.

I sighed. I certainly couldn’t get rid of these. They’d go back into storage and maybe Andre and Aris (my boys) would get to know their Gramps a bit better by going through them one day. I put “1994” back and was about to move on to the next box when I noticed an outlier peeking out from underneath the sea of red leather. There was a small black notebook mixed in with the other journals. Strange. My dad was a creature of habit and it seemed quite odd for him to journal in any book not bound in red leather. Intrigued, I opened the book up to the first page.

“Jan 1, 2011: Ruth Johnson from church gave me this black notebook for Christmas. (What did she call it? Vole-Skin?) Somehow she found out I like to journal. It has an impossibly soft leather cover. I feel obliged to use it as I promised I would. Hopefully, I will get used to the color. The paper is of a very fine quality and more textured than I’m used to. I already feel uncomfortable.”

I laughed. It was the first good laugh I’d had in weeks. Yeah, that was my dad.

I flipped through the notebook and was about to put it aside when something caught my eye: a small little snowman drawn into the corner of the page, smiling and waving up at me.

When I was in elementary school, for several months, my mother became quite ill. The weight loss and iron deficiency even caused her to be hospitalized for about a week. During this time, Dad packed my lunch every day. And everyday was ‘Sandwich Day’ to my dad. Each sandwich (usually PJ&J) was wrapped in parchment paper and taped shut. On every wrapping he’d draw a tiny little snowman, smiling and waving up at me.

I felt the emotion in the back of my throat (not for the first time during this process of going through my dad’s old things) as I read the entry (which I realized was exactly ten years ago to the day):

“Feb 9, 2011: Sarah left this morning to drive back home. She says student teaching is going great. We had a nice visit this time and I miss her already. I gave her a hundred dollar bill just as she was leaving and she smiled and gave me a big hug and said, “Thanks Pops!” I live for that! I just wish I could give her more. Barb’s prescriptions are costing us a pretty penny these days, even with the insurance.”

I took a second to wipe my eyes. I remembered this day. Dad always tried to have a little money for me. I appreciated it because I knew money was tight. I really hoped he knew I appreciated it.

That wasn’t all my dad had to say on Feb 9, 2011, though:

“Speaking of money. My neighbor, Mike Masuda, is moving back to California - Silicon Valley. He’s been out of work for a few years but apparently got hired by a company out there. He’s a big-time computer guy.

“Well, he still owed me close to a thousand dollars for helping him fix and upgrade the fan-cooling systems he had for his computers (why on Earth he had so many computers, I have no idea) and earlier this week he borrowed and broke my best snow-blower by hitting that big rock in the front of his yard. Well, Mike’s a good guy. Young guy and I know it's been tough for him and Gail these last few years. They have a newborn son.

“He came over today and said he was very sorry but he didn't have the money he owed me. I told him not to worry about it, but he insisted on paying me back. He asked to see my computer and he click-clacked on the idiot-box for quite awhile. Asked me what I’d like my password to be (I told him “sarahjanelunz”). Then he tells me he’s put $20,000 dollars worth of “coins” on my computer for me! ‘That’s ten times what I owe you, Mr. Lunz! Ten times! Coin’s worth a dollar today! Finally worth a dollar!’ he said. (He was very excited about… whatever it was he was talking about.) I told him thank you and asked how I could deposit it in the bank. He told me I can't really do that right now. But soon hopefully.

I laughed and told him thanks. Mikes a funny guy. Lots of energy. I have no idea what he’s talking about but it definitely sounds like a scam to me. Well, it's only money and I wished him luck out in lala land.

Barb’s already asleep. Think I’ll make a cup of chamomile and hit the hay.”

I finished reading, blinked a few times and read it again.

“Nahhh,” I said to myself. “It couldn’t be.”

I walked over and fired up Dad’s ancient desktop. When it booted up I looked around the cluttered desktop and realized I had no idea what I was searching for. I opened my laptop and googled “cryptocurrency 2011”. After reading for a few minutes, I did a search for a “qt wallet” on the desktop and found one… in the recycling bin, along with about a thousand other files. Apparently, Dad didn’t know you had to empty the recycling for the files to be deleted. I moved the wallet back onto the desktop and opened it. I input my full name as the password.

And there they were: 20,000 Bitcoins. Just… sitting there… on John “I-Hate-Computers” Lunz’s barely functioning, fifteen-year-old desktop clunker.

On the day Mike Masuda transferred the coins to dad they were worth $20,000.

Today, exactly ten years later, they were worth $948,710,800… and counting.

My dad was nearly a billionaire when he died, and he didn’t even know it - probably never would have known it.

I felt lightheaded, nauseous. I went to the bathroom and threw up.

When I came out, I saw my mom at the top of the stairs. “Are you alright, honey? Mr. Hughes is downstairs. He said he was gonna come by and collect some of Dad’s old things today?”

“Oh,” I said. “Uhh, I’m not feeling well, Mom. Can you ask him to come back in a couple days, please?”

“What's wrong, dear?” Mom looked fearful.

“No, it's okay. I’m fine.” I smiled at her. “Could you put on some water for tea, though? I’ll be down in a little while. I… I need to talk to you about something.”

“Of course, dear.” Mom replied, still looking nervous.

I went back into my dad's office, double checked the computer to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated the whole thing and (when I’d confirmed I hadn’t) sent two emails. The first, to my accountant asking for a facetime the following day. And the second to my therapist, asking for the same thing.

As I left the room, I caught a glimpse of a photo on the wall. It was taken right after we’d won the league championships my junior year. I was in my basketball uniform and Dad stood between Mom and me, an arm around each of us. We were all smiles.

All I could think was how I’d trade every penny of that damn money for just a little more time with him. I put my fingers against the glass.

“Thanks Pops,” I said, my voice shaking. “I love you. And I promise to take care of Mom, okay? Just like you always took care of us.”

I don't know much about this world. But I really hope he heard me somehow.

I left the room and heard the kettle whistling as I started down the stairs.