JAMIE SUE AUSTIN

We bought the piggy bank because my son’s occupational therapist said that mechanics needed to grasp a coin and put in in a slot were the same ones needed to hold a pen to write.  It was pink and ugly.  It was ill designed.  Money could go in, but there was no way to get it out.  It was a dollar.

The first time we sat in front of it, pennies on the carpet, it took my son an hour to get twenty cents through the slot.  He cried a few times, frustrated at how the simple task escaped him.  But, he kept putting pennies in the slot.

Eventually, he could put coins in slots quite well.  When he grasped his first large crayon and crudely wrote the letters of his name, I put a coin in the slot for his accomplishment.  When he finally said two words together, after months in speech therapy, another coin slid into the slot.  For every little victory; another coin.

The bank got heavy and bulky.  I dragged it along in every move.  It was always the first thing I packed.  I put it proudly by his bedside.  The tooth fairy left money under pillows.  I slid coins in the slot.

I thought about that day that we would saw the hateful thing in half.  How I would show him the hundreds of little shiny coins and tell him how each and every coin was a difficulty that he had over come.  How there would be more difficulties out there in the world, but that he would manage, because he had done it hundreds of times before.

A snake in a possum’s pouch took it from the house one day.  I imagine that when the snake split open the belly of the pig that it counted each and every cent.  It probably looked for rare coins.  It might have even gotten excited when it saw the dollars from when my son broke his arm and learned to play one handed on the swing.  That it took the worthless money and spent the symbols of my son’s accomplishments.

Today, my son’s teacher said he was brilliant.  She said he was well spoken.  She said he was improving every day and that next year he’d be better challenged in traditional classes.  I so desperately wanted to put a coin in the slot.  I wanted him to see that coin when he grew up.