Found hat!
by rebecca ~ March 29th, 2005. Filed under: Ordinary Miracles, Poems & art.
It’s found! It’s found! Yes, it’s found!
If you recall, a few months ago (uuuuhhh, I don’t know, back in the January entry titled “Lost hat”), I bemoaned the loss of a favored hat in poesy. Well, as I sat chatting to my husband on the cell phone from our car in the faculty parking lot last Friday, I suddenly spotted that furry old hat propped up against the bicycle canopy. The melting snow had revealed its captive treasure to me!
I had to chip the hat’s tassles out of a big block of ice with the edge of my car’s ice scraper, and it was tough work–at least twenty minutes of wild hacking.
Scrouched like an insane grey squirrel at the side of the lot, I realized my behavior might appear undignified as a university faculty member, but sometimes I cannot (okay, all right, I usually cannot) control myself.
It was my hat, my beloved hat! It was only proper to rescue it from the ice bed it had been entombed in for all too long.
A senior faculty member drove past as I hacked away, and I paused and slightly bowed to her. She did a double-take, then a triple. I haven’t seen her face-to-face yet, so I assume she thinks that foreign lecturer has gone bonkers.
Two girl students walked past, so I invited them over to explain my ordeal (in part, to find some informed witnesses in my questionable act). They wished me luck, laughing, and their kindness emboldened me. In my determined attack, I finally released one tassle, but then I had to amputate the last tassle’s tip to the ice block–there was no other way. It may look a bit battered, but it’s home!
Kudos to my husband for reminding me to take pictures of the finding. The hat, which he said smelled like a wet dog but I felt smelled like the fresh outdoors, is now washed and hanging in the house, over the heater, to dry.