Object

It says in big bold, fancy script "TEXAS". I know for a fact that Nana had never been to Texas, and I surely had never been there. It has a picture of a cowboy riding a bucking horse with a barn and fence in the background.  Our family likes horses, I even had a pony as a young child, but we're not huge horse lovers. It is about the size of a softball, but flat on the front and back. The edges are molded to give the appearance of wood bark, and the color is a soft chocolate brown.  I have carried this piggy bank with me everytime I have moved since 1998, April of 1998 to be exact. That is the date that Nana passed away, April Fools Day, 1998. Believe me, nobody in the family was playing practical jokes that year, and I don't recall too many since then.  I spent a lot of Friday nights with her, she would pick me up on her way home from work. Friday was pay day. I would get my piggy bank, and she would get her coffee cans. She would empty all of her change from her broken down purse out into a big pile on the kitchen table. We would  put all the silver into a large Folgers coffee can, replace the lid tightly, then place it carefully back into her hiding spot on top of the fridge. Time to sort through the pennies, this was my favorite part. Who could find the most wheatie pennies? Her little dog, Tammy, would jump everytime I would yell "I found one!!" We would inspect it to make sure it really was a wheatie, check the year, and talk about any odd marks or colors. Only after this careful inspection would she let me drop it into my bank, "Pallunck". As the years passed, Nana and I stopped doing our special Friday night change inspections. Only because I had gotten older and friends and fun had become more important than silly wheat pennies. I still went to Nanas on the weekends, but it was Sunday afternoons to get a free home cooked meal and my laundry done. One Sunday, she reached above the microwave and pulled out my little "TEXAS" piggy bank. She wanted to show me that she had put a band-aid over the plug. On that band-aid, she had written my full name in her ever so neat penminship. Looking back, Nana knew she was sick then, and that was her way of telling me that she had loved our Friday night rituals as much as I had.