If you’re a regular reader around here, you know about Piggy the pot holder. Piggy has been Hadley’s constant companion since she was 20 months old.
That silly pot holder has traveled the country and snuck into dozens of pictures. Where Hadley was, there was Piggy also.
I came home from a blogging day-trip event in July 2015 with a take-home bag filled with all kinds of random things, including a pink, silicone pot holder designed to resemble a pig. I was thisclose to throwing it away, but just as I walked toward the trash can, Jamie took it from me, put it on his hand, and started chasing Hadley around the house making snorting noises. That tiny toddler giggled like a fool, and from that day forward Piggy was her favorite.
Piggy went to the grocery store, to church, to the park, to friends’ houses, on vacations, and more. Hadley couldn’t take a nap or go to sleep at night without Piggy. I can’t count how many times I wanted to bang my head against the wall when we couldn’t find Piggy and it was time to go to bed. We would end up flipping the entire house completely upside down looking for the pig.
When Hadley had her accident, I even bolted out of the ambulance before it left for the hospital racing through the house trying to find Piggy. I knew (hoped) Hadley would eventually want it. Everyone must have thought I was a whacko when I climbed back in the ambulance with a pot holder!
I became so worried about what would happen if she lost Piggy for good that I searched on Amazon and purchased a back-up (I couldn’t believe they actually sold these dumb things.) We called the replacement “Piggy 2.0”.
Welp. She wanted nothing to do with Piggy 2.0. Her original piggy was slowly but surely falling apart and ultimately resembled nothing like a pot holder. Piggy was essentially a big, shredded piece of nothing, but she loved it. She even dressed up like Piggy for Halloween!
Around her third birthday in November, she became more interested in a stuffed cat that she’d had for over a year but never played with. She named it Sophia, and we started to see Piggy take a bit of a back seat.
We took both Sophia and Piggy to Alabama to my parent’s home during Thanksgiving. When we got back home, Piggy was gone. We figured we somehow devastatingly left it at my parent’s house (she’d never spent a night without Piggy in over a year), but they’d surely find it and send it back to Hadley as soon as possible.
We held our breaths waiting for the meltdown the was surely going to ensue once she realized that Piggy wasn’t around, but it never happened. She’d moved on to Sophia.
Also, they never found it. To this day, we have no idea about Piggy’s final whereabouts.
In hindsight, I’m wondering if she got too frustrated with Piggy’s shredded condition that she threw it away at my parent’s house, and maybe that’s why she has never gotten upset about missing her Piggy. We’re not sure.
It’s kind of humorous that Jamie and I took it harder than Hadley did, mainly because her lack of care signaled that that hilarious, slightly maddening season of her childhood was over.
RIP Piggy the pot holder. You never once served your original purpose of getting hot pans out of the oven, but you made a little blonde girl really happy for a long time.
Hadley’s new sidekick has stuck around, so be on the look-out for Sophia (a.k.a “that cat in pajamas”). She’s Hadley’s new bestie, and we’re immensely thankful that she’s a bit harder to lose than a small pot holder.
Let’s chat!
Did you have a special companion when you were a kid? Do your kids have one now that you or them would freak out if it were lost?
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