A Hat to Bring Me Home

Have you ever rebelled against your mother by doing exactly what she asked you to do? Here’s how I did just that, with a little help from my grandmother

When my stepfather retired from the air force in 1984, my parents settled back in their hometown of Ludington, Michigan. Their parents, grand parents and some great grandparents were all from Ludington. My folks bought my step-dad’s childhood home at 805 E. Filer Street, a block away from my mom’s childhood home at 805 E. Foster St., where my grandma still lived.

During my college years I would beat a path between the two houses by stepping out our front door, crossing Filer Street, taking a slight jog to the left and following the walk that hugged Lila Burnson’s house, slipping through the two white picket gates of the fence that delineated her back yard, crossing the alley and then coming through my grandpa’s rose trellis, past the huge Weeping Willow tree we loved to climb when I was younger and to the back door of grandma’s.

My grand parents lived in this house through most of their lives and the first thirty years of mine. I spent hours there making memories from the time I was a toddler to the time I was an archivist. I remember one habit I had in my grand parents house was staring at myself in the large mirror over the huge stereo console in their front room and wondering who would be looking back at me from that mirror in another year, or five, or ten. I never imagined that I would not always have access to the view from that mirror in that room. I still dream myself into that house regularly.

During my college-era visits to grandma, I’d like to say I stopped in for tea and cookies but the truth is that she liked to have a drink before dinner. About four o’clock my grand parents often declared with enthusiasm that it was five o’clock somewhere, then filled the top of their kitchen table with snacks like peanuts and chips and dip and homemade rye bread. I would toast the rye bread slightly and press slices of cheese onto it until it would sweat and taste the best. By the time I was in college grandma was alone and one summer I did a series of tape-recorded oral histories with her over drinks and snacks. I can still pop those tapes in any time I want and hear her voice and listen to her tell stories about people in my family who were born before I could meet them any other way. And I can still hear the ice clinking in our gin-and-tonics.

I also could run over to grandma’s in the evenings if she was watching something on television that I preferred to what my parents were watching. This meant that I would be walking home after dark and that caused my mother to watch for me out the front door despite the fact that I was over twenty-one, the distance was less than a block, and she had known all of the families in all of the houses anywhere around for generations. I found this caution excessive and was as patient and indulgent of it as any kid my age would be. I refused instructions to call home before I left grandma’s. Grandmother, though sympathetic with me, was secretly complicit by waiting until I had left and calling mother herself. It took me awhile to figure that one out.

One evening my mother’s behavior became even more outrageous. Grandma and I had been snugly watching something eighties when big, soft snowflakes began to fall outside. Mom called to relate this obvious fact and to tell grandma that I should wear a hat home. While I rolled my eyes and sputtered disdain, grandma found this mildly amusing. And then she had the perfect plan.

It was her idea.

She said that I should wear a hat home and she would get it, but instead of heading for the closet by the back door where all the outdoor gear was stored, she went upstairs. Upstairs was her bedroom and an adjacent walk in closet. This closet was heavily populated with remnants of women’s fashions from several decades, including a floor filled with variously colored pumps. When I was quite small, my cousin, David, and I crawled to the back of this closet and had a nice nap, which our families experienced as a terrifying disappearance.

Grandma came back down the stairs obviously enjoying some private joke very much. She handed me a hat that I am looking at as I write, having never given it back to her since that night. It is a green apple colored felt pillbox with a big bow in the front and two reddish-orange tinged ostrich feathers sticking well out to the side. It looks a little like something Betty Davis might have worn for a particularly dramatic scene and in fact, the label inside reads, “Original Movie Modes designed by Caspar Davis of Hollywood”. It sat tall and straight on only the very top of my head and the feathers bounced gently with any movement.

I was wearing jeans and sneakers and a Western Michigan University sweatshirt. To return home I put on my blue parka and grandma’s green felt hat with the vibrant colored ostrich feathers. Grandma and I thought this was extremely funny and laughed pretty hard about it. As I came around Lila Burnson’s house that night, I could see my mother squinting into the darkness towards me, and the squint continued as one of puzzlement until I stood directly under her porch light before her. In this way I obeyed my mother, we all had a good laugh and I got a new hat.