Hats

My mother wore hats. Not all the time, certainly, but often. She had a whole collection of hats in her bedroom – mostly wide-brimmed hats. There was the suede hat with a floppy brim, a favorite of hers. She also had a black, Amish men’s hat that my brother and I brought back from our visit to Pennsylvania Dutch country, and a similar black hat that had a narrower brim. That was the hat she was wearing when she got hit by a car.

She and I had gone to pick up her boyfriend at the airport one night. On the way back, she was making a left turn across a divided highway and didn’t see an approaching car, which clipped our van as we pulled into their lane. None of us were injured, but my mother was very upset about the accident and, I presume, worried about the people in the other car. She jumped out of the van and ran across the road without looking, and that’s when she got hit by a car. Her body tumbled off onto the shoulder. Her boyfriend then got out of the car and ran across to her.

This left me alone in the van, which was running and still sticking out into the intersection. I remember being very calm as I tried to figure out what to do. I was too young to have a driver’s license, but I wondered whether I should move the van to a safer location. Or should I stay with the van, but not move it? In the end, I left the van running and crossed the highway (after carefully looking for cars!) to see how my mother was. Both of the cars that had been involved were on the side of the road. I saw the cracked and crazed glass of the windshield that had hit my mother’s body, and I remember being surprised that such a slight person would be able to inflict so much damage. I had the image of her body as a bag of sand, shattering the glass as it impacted the windshield. She was lying on the weedy berm, unconscious and still. Her hat wasn’t on her head; it must have blown off when she was hit. I knew she would want her hat, so I hunted around until I found it. I brought her hat to her, just as she was coming around.

The first thing she said as she opened her eyes was, “Where’s my hat?”

“It’s right here. I have it for you.” I felt smugly pleased that I knew her so well.

An ambulance came. My mother was the only one injured (the people in the car that had clipped us were fine). I remember her holding onto her boyfriend, and her blood was seeping onto his jacket. I worried that the blood wouldn’t wash out and had to restrain myself from saying so. She refused to go to the hospital, even after repeated urging from the ambulance driver. She was fine and wanted to go home, she said. I assume her boyfriend drove us home, although I can’t remember. I do remember the deep bruises and abrasions on my mother’s back the next day and how sore and achy she was. Yet, amazingly, there were no broken bones, no organ damage. I didn’t understand how she could emerge with such minor injuries – after all, she had shattered the windshield of a car! At the same time, it never occurred to me that she could have died in the accident. I was calmly sure that she would awaken and would, of course, want her hat.

After she died, I kept most of her hat collection. In addition to the various hats she wore, there were items of unusual headgear, including a full fencing mask. I started to collect hats of my own, and I wore hats (both hers and my own) throughout high school and college. Wearing her hat, I could recapitulate her style and feel connected to my mother. Gradually, though, I stopped wearing hats with any regularity. Maybe my sense of style changed, or maybe I was able to let go of my mother’s style and find my own. Or, more likely, it became obvious that it was unusual, if not downright odd, for women to wear these types of hats. As I tried to understand the often confusing, unspoken rules of women’s fashion, it was clear that my collection of hats did not fit in, and I just didn’t have the requisite panache to buck the system successfully. Although I wore them less, I still held onto the hats, now displayed on the wall or crowded into a closet. Gradually, I got rid of some of them, as it became clear I wouldn’t wear this one or that. I finally persuaded myself to give away the fencing mask. But when I look in my closet today, I still have a few hats – mostly my own, some gifts from others – the straw hat I wear for gardening, the patchwork Guatemalan hats, a red beret. But there amongst the diminished collection is her floppy suede hat and her black hat. It might even be the one I rescued from the side of the highway.