hats

The only sound I like better than the wind through the palms on a seventy-three degree tropical morning, complete with birdsong and tree frogs, are waves crashing on the beach. The quiet symphony that demands nothing, not that I analyze the chords and instruments or listen hard to the lyrics or try to adjust my major key ear to someone else's minor. It is most freeing at dawn, when really, who can ask anything of another beyond sleep? Or sex I suppose. There is that. But the wind in the palms this morning gives me permission to write. Finally.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not really complaining. I wear a lot of hats. I like to add new ones to the collection, trying them on, taking the persona that goes with them and letting her out to play. How else would I have found megg in her black fedora, tipped over an eye while slicking on her blood red lipstick, or lily with her ponytail through a baseball cap, a kiss of gloss and ready for anything, or god help us good old rose who doesn't care what hat she wears, so long as she can toss it off?

There are others, hats that stay out of the words, usually frowning on them. The proper spring-green-straw-with –silk-flowers, which instantly transforms the wearer to junior league proper complete with feeling naked without her white gloves. And the Practical Winter Felt, one simple silk band, black of course, designed to keep snow off the hair so that it stays straight and tidy and oh-so-corporate. The bonnets tied with pink ribbons to match the expectation of wide-eyed children who expect and deserve Donna Reed perfection. The lightweight beach straw, protection from too much sun, requiring the hair to be pulled back in a braid, only to escape into screwed up tendrils, And the southern belle picture hat, Nawhlins style, which must be accompanied by a smile that holds back more than it tells…..

But hats need to be worn separately, given time to let their personality take hold, let each part have its moment on the stage. But this week it is like some crazy vaudeville skit (or is that the effect of Wise Children, the book writing class is reading?) where someone has taken hold of all the hats, jammed them one on top of the other and required me to wear them all at once.

And you know what? All that dancing, marching, leading and following exhausts me. My feet hurt.

Ah well, as my mother used to say, I made my bed. But I think, rather than lie in it this morning, I'm going to go to the gym. Without a hat at all.

And I promise to change these terrible colors soon. Rose picked them out. What can I say?