The Hat

It started with that hat. The old, beat-up baseball cap that had been knocking around the back of the hall closet since those long-ago days when the kids played Little League and he wanted to show support for his kids' team.

Now he felt compelled to put on the baseball cap every time he left the house. At first, he told himself that it was just part of an effort to feel a bit younger - to connect with his grown-up kids now that they had moved away, become adults and started their own lives.

But was that really why he started walking around town with a faded blue cap that said "Sparksville Tigers Roar!" - and was adorned with the image of a leaping tiger with sparks coming from its eyes?

His wife Dora tried to be understanding. "Mike," she said delicately, in a tone that she hoped didn't sound too exasperated. "There's no shame in losing your hair. Look at Bruce Willis and Patrick Stewart - they don't have a whole lot of hair and they seem to do just fine."

Mike smiled and said that he appreciated the sentiment, but really just wanted to keep his head warm. After all, it was cold outside. That's all it was. The old baseball cap just happened to be handy.

**

Sparksville was one of those towns that grew too fast, then not at all. Slowly and inexorably, it shrank as the reason for its existence become more and more irrelevant to the daily life of the town.

It was one of many towns that sprang up in the hydroelectric dam building bonanza of the 1930s - helping power the country out of the Great Depression and then being a vital force in the war effort and a literal powerhouse of the postwar recovery.

But the 1930s were a long time ago - and people these days got their power from vast distributed networks of power sources, including wind, solar and nuclear power. And even though the John W. Burriss dam was still operating, it didn't require a whole lot of people to keep it going.

Much of that work was now automated - and only a modest crew was needed to run the dam. Mike Parnell was part of that crew. Mike enjoyed his job - and the friendship of his buddies at work, although he worried for the future of the dam. There was talk of decommissioning - and that sometimes kept him awake at night.

Despite it all, he and Dora had done OK. She enjoyed her work providing guidance for job seekers and the kids were all adulting just fine. Two of the three had gone the college route. Stella and Tommy were always strong academically and so Mike and Dora had never worried about them in school.

Jane, however, was never the bookish type, but had an amazing affinity for all things mechanical - which she parlayed into being a senior technical specialist at one of those high-end electric car companies.

Mike smiled a little at that - reflecting on the fact that while electric car companies were the hottest investments on the planet, the oldest and most reliable producers of electricity were not.

But Mike wasn’t sold on electric cars yet – at least not for him. He was content to drive his reliable old 1994 Ford Explorer for as long as it would hold the road and get him where he needed to go. Although Jane kept saying that she could get them a great deal on an electric car, Mike was quite happy to keep the old Explorer for as long as he could.

After all, wasn't he also an old explorer? Mike cradled the car keys in his hand, opened the closet door and instinctively reached for The Hat.

It wasn't there. "NORA," he yelled, hoping that she would hear him in the downstairs den. "Have you seen my hat?"

Nora emerged, explained that she not done anything with the blessed hat - and then helped Mike look for it.

She knew that it clearly meant more to Mike than he was letting on. And getting through midlife is tough enough - so if Mike needed a ratty old baseball cap to help him get through it, so be it.

It was, however, nowhere to be found.

So Mike set off for his office to see if he had left his hat there. Seeing a hard hat on the seat of the Explorer suggested to him that maybe he had just forgotten The Hat when he had taken it off to put on the hard hat for an inspection he had done on Friday.

So, despite it being a Saturday, Mike headed out in the Explorer on his hat rescue mission. Mike laughed as remembered the day he got it.

Stella was in her second season as shortstop for the Tigers and it was a scorching June day. She caught two pop fly balls in the bottom of the 9th inning and kept the Maplewood Malteers from advancing to the playoffs - and gave the usually toothless Tigers a reason to roar.

Mike was bursting with pride for his little girl and wanted the whole world to know how much he supported her. So he bought The Hat and wore it every day for the rest of the season.

Stella was at first touched, then blasé and eventually - as many teenagers are - a little embarrassed by her Dad always wearing The Hat.

It wasn’t at his office – and Mike felt surprisingly stressed and upset by that. It was just a hat, after all. And if he really wanted another one, they were easy enough to buy. So why was he buzzing around on perfectly fine Saturday morning looking for it.

And, of course, Mike circled back to his earlier thoughts about the hat as a kind of talisman to connect to the youth of his kids – and himself. As he pulled into the driveway, Mike realized that it really was more than that.

The Hat represented a “Dad Moment” for Mike – the kind of moment he was sorely missing right now.

He sat in the Explorer for a few more minutes and then went inside and shared what he was feeling with Dora. "The kids may be finished being kids, but I'm not finished being a Dad,” he told her. “I can't just turn it off because they've hit some arbitrary age or milestone in their lives."

Dora listened, paused for a moment and looked into Mike’s eyes before she spoke.

"Oh, Mike,” she said. “You don't have to stop being a Dad. You just need to understand that the kids - even though they are adults- just need different things from you now. It's no different than when they no longer needed you to tie their shoelaces or walk them to school. It's all about meeting them where they are in their lives.”

Mike nodded, deeply appreciating the perspective that Dora was able to bring to almost any problem. “Throughout their lives, you've worn many hats - from bus driver to tutor to first aid attendant to tech support guru,” she added. “You don't have to wear just one hat. Listen, trust yourself and know that you'll always put on the hat that makes sense for what the situation requires. And if you pick the wrong hat every once it a whole, that's OK. You have many people on your life who love you and will gently nudge you in the right direction."

Mike knew that Dora was right. He gave her a big hug, thanked her for her wisdom and a tear rolled down his cheek. Then another. And finally a small flood.

And then as he wiped his eyes, Mike saw it - the old Sparksville Tigers hat - with the brim peering out from under another hat at the back of the closet. But he also knew that he perhaps might need never to put it on again.

But Mike did stop wearing the hat - and found a new home for it. It was last seen on the head of Stella's little boy Jake, who currently only wears one hat.

-THE END-