Hats Off

At first you said, "It's just a hat", when you could tell I was upset on the phone. I was. I was standing on a frozen street corner half a block away from my kickboxing lesson, tears welling up in my eyes, my throat full of brambles, trying to explain that the metro employee wouldn't help me. He just gazed at me, eyes half-mast, as if I'd woken him from a nap and shoved a piece of paper at me through the half-moon window with a number on it for the Lost and Found.

I'd remembered. I had even some recollection of something; perhaps that same colour, that burgundy, that wine colour falling off my lap as I scrambled to get off the crowded metro car. I went to see the metro employee right away after.

I remembered.

"It's just a hat," you said a second time now sounding more annoyed at me, probably because you think I'm a child and crying compounds that.

The Winter Olympics are taking place in Turin, Italy and today I went shopping at The Bay ( a department store recently bought by an American company)to purchase a warm sheepskin hat with the word CANADA embroidered in red across the front. The tag lets me know a part of the money I'm spending goes to Canadian athletes.

You haven't taken the hat off. You said you might sleep in it. But then the hats were mistaken.

I honestly didn't associate the two hats - for one thing you hadn't worn the hat I'd lost for over a year. It was a forgotten hat. I just thought, since you kept commenting on how nice the hats were in The Bay commercials that maybe I'd get you one. Actually, no. When I left this afternoon to go to my kickboxing class I said I'd stop by The Bay for the new coffee machine we wanted and you said to buy you the hat. I was allowed to have my card today to pay for it because I have been a good girl. Because I have not run off with my paycheck to a bar - to drink and drown, to drink and drown...

I like the hat on you. It looks good - better than I thought it would. It looks nice on you and I tell you so. You say nothing.

We watch a movie after I've made a simple dinner and I cry because the movie is sad, it's about racism and perception and love and hate and tears and hope. You ask me why I'm crying because it's only a movie and you think I'm foolish.

I try and tell you a story about one of the actors when the movie is over and it comes out all wrong and jumbled because I can tell you're not listening. I am distracted by the fact that you never look at me, that the air is heavy with your waiting imaptiently for me to finish and I can't contiue, I fall over my words and then nothing comes out and you say "Uh huh." as if I've ordered a Happy Meal. I want to scream but I decide to storm off and go to bed leaving a "you're welcome for the hat" in the room behind me.

You are standing in front of me, five minutes later, arms crossed and weight on one leg, saying "Why did you buy me the hat, M? Why?". I try to figure out what you are getting at because I know you are trying to make a point but I'm not sure what it is...And then you spit it out.


"Feeling guilty about losing my hat!?"


All the air came out of me like I was stuck with a knitting needle. I hadn't felt guilty! I felt bad that I lost your hat of course - that's why I said I was sorry...But that new hat, the one you were ready to sleep in, was not bought out of guilt. Not at all.

You think you are right. You think it's a guilty hat, a guilty girlfriend. But you are wrong and I'll just sit here crying because you think so little of me. Poor little me.

That's why you didn't say thank you. You thought you were owed this hat. Somebody owed you...even if it was just a hat.