12/17/2021
By Kate Stone Lombardi
I try not to get attached to material things. But I have a thing about my wool hat. Maybe it’s because I’ve hung on to it for so long – at least since the early 1990s. We’ve seen a lot together. The hat has been to Alaska. It’s been to the Canadian Rockies. It’s visited Glacier National Park and Northern Vermont. For decades it’s gone to the Adirondacks.
When I was a child, I constantly lost and misplaced things. My Mom claims I came home from school one day wearing only one shoe, with no explanation about where the other had gone. The first prayer I ever remember uttering was for God to help me find some lost piece of paper. Homework, books, items of clothing seems to disappear into a vortex.
Over time I became more organized, but as I’ve aged, it’s come full circle. Where are my keys? My wallet? My slippers?
The hat has been left behind in numerous places, but always recovered. I’ve been half way down a mountain and realized it was missing and had to climb back up again. It has been scrounged off of theater floors and reclaimed from museum lost and founds. The hat has even traveled into a men’s maximum security prison, where it earned me the nickname “Strawberry Shortcake” from some of the students I teach there.
Last week, I went to reach for my trusty friend. It wasn’t in the hat drawer. I wasn’t worried. I began to search other likely places. The pockets of my coat. The front seat of my car. Other drawers. The hat was nowhere. Now it was time to retrace my steps. We’d gone to (fully vaccinated and boosted) friends’ house for dinner. I emailed them and they reported a full search, including the floor of the coat closet and the lawn which I crossed to our car, but came up empty.
Again, I searched the car, this time under the seats with a flashlight, and the pockets of every coat I own, and every drawer in which I could have conceivably jammed it. It was time to admit that this time it was really gone. I couldn’t believe how sad I was over a hat. It was just a thing. It wasn’t valuable. But somehow it had become a companion over the decades.
A few days later, I got an email from our hosts. The subject line read, “Is this it?” Inside was the above photo of the hat. The couple had been out for the day, but when they got home, they found it lying on a stonewall that ran between their house and the street. The leaf blowers had come that day, and the couple speculated that been buried under the debris.
The hat and I are now reunited. It’s received a much-needed wash. I’m beginning to think it’s my good luck charm.