Headgear of Yesteryear
is this the last post about packing? maybe
I’m telling you, you notice all kinds of new things about yourself when you pack up and move to another country. (The crucial part is not the other country but being limited to few boxes.)
I did not know I had a thing for hats, more broadly headgear, but apparently I do. In yesterday’s unpacking, there was a large box of your standard wool caps, berets, baseball caps, a crushed-but-recovering Panama, a felt hat with a wide brim, good for walking in the rain.
That doesn’t seem so out of the ordinary, though I did choose them over other things I use more often. I think all hats made the cut. And then I found the bridal veil from my marriage that ended many years ago. Huh? I have zero—make that negative—interest in remarriage, and anyway, who would reuse a veil? For a moment I could not think of a single reason why I chose to keep this thing. Eventually I remembered that I had an idea that my great-niece might like it for dress-up.
Which honestly is pretty lame. Like I was just making something up for an excuse, because it’s sort of a hat and I don’t want to part with any hats.
Similarly, I chose to bring my grandfather’s top hat, in its original and breaking-to-pieces hatbox. Did I trot out the dress-up excuse again? Because obviously no one is wearing a top hat anyplace. No invitations to royal weddings on my mantelpiece.
The top hat is beautiful and well-made, and the box one of those artifacts that recalls an earlier time that these days feels impossibly distant, when men wore nice hats and took good care of them by storing them in their boxes. Can you even imagine? My father wore a hat everyday to work when I was child. With the little feather in the brim. The sort of hats men wore in the 1950s, to go with their suits and ties.
Maybe that’s where I developed my hat fixation, my sense that we should have a lot of them, that our heads deserve good coverage, and once you own one, apparently you should never, ever get rid of it.
I love this post! A friend and his wife just cleared out his mom's house on Hanover Ave. for an estate sale--she lived there for 65 years. There were many hats, including a top hat in a box! I hope it went to a good home. Also, we have a picture of our daughter Livia at 2 1/2 at a wedding where she grabbed the bride's tossed away veil and put it on her own head. I must find that photo.
Well, Nell, I am not sure that the current pic of you in your old bridal veil was a selling point😬. My dad wore a hat to work every day too, with a sort of Humphrey Bogart look. But I also remember having to wear hats to church as a child. Remember the ‘half-hat’? I generally looked awful in those, but now I like broader brimmed hats for swimming in the pool and protecting my face. Yup, back to liking hats again. Thx for that bit of fun.