Mom loses the old Armenian coin her mom gave her.

(from Twenty Grand and Other Tales of Love and Money)

Our driveway was a dirt road that wound through a field. It was often lined by eight-foot banks—which I climbed on my way home from school—with teetering, sand-specked bucket-lumps at their tops. Sporadically, a kid came with a tractor. When he left, the lane was clear. But overnight the wind swept snow across the shelf, up over the banks, and into the road. By morning the drifts were as deep as if the driveway hadn’t been plowed at all. Every day, my mother called the kid, who was slow and did the easy jobs in town first, to try to get him to come. Then she shoveled a path to the woodpile and one to the car.

Damn. This one’s a total heartbreaker. I mean, it’s funny sometimes and the ever bleaker situations the characters find themselves in ring true right to the bone. But ouch. My heart.
Read it here.