Hats
Sandra Alcosser
Auntie lies in the rest home with a feeding tube and a bedpan, she weighs nothing, she fidgets and shakes, and all I can see are her knotted hands and the carbon facets of her eyes, she was famous for her pies and her kindness to neighbors, but if it is true that every hat exhibits a drama the psyche wishes it could perform, what was my aunt saying all the years of my childhood when she squeezed into cars with those too tall hats, those pineapples and colored cockades, my aunt who told me I should travel slowly or I would see too much before I died, wore spires and steeples, tulled toques. The velvet inkpots of Schiaparelli, the mousseline de soie of Lilly Daché have disappeared into the world, leaving behind one flesh-colored box, Worth stenciled on the top, a coral velvet cloche inside with matching veil and drawstring bag, and what am I to make of these Dolores del Rio size 4 black satin wedgies with constellations of spangles on the bridge. Before she climbed into the white boat of the nursing home and sailed away--talking every day to family in heaven, calling them through the sprinkling system--my aunt said she was pushing her cart through the grocery when she saw young girls at the end of an aisle pointing at her, her dowager's hump, her familial tremors. Auntie, who claimed that ninety pounds was her fighting weight, carried her head high, hooded, turbaned, jeweled, her neck straight under pounds of roots and vegetables that shimmied when she walked. Surely this is not the place of women in our world, that when we are old and curled like crustaceans, young girls will laugh at us, point their fingers, run as fast as they can in the opposite direction.
Dare you to read this all the way through without your eyes threatening tears.
I love the line, every hat exhibits a drama the psyche wishes it could perform. I suppose shoes and jewelry do this for me. With each year, the more dramatically inclined I become. I just purchased a pair of black leather wrap around pumps with a three inch heel. I really have nothing to wear with them or anywhere to wear them (yet), but I'll figure it out. My jewelry is getting bolder and bigger. Perhaps because the older you get, the more invisible you become, it's imperative to show the world who you always meant to be, since your youth was spent playing it safe and by the rules.
My Aunt Della is eighty-four, although you'd never know it. When I was a young girl, I couldn't understand why she acted like she was beautiful, since she was SO old. Old to me was anyone over sixteen. Looking at the pictures from that time, she was beautiful. She still is, and, frankly, she has to botox. There's no other explanation for an unlined eighty-four-year old forehead.
I didn't want to see Della old, wanted to remember the preening woman of my youth when four years ago I was invited to her 80th birthday party. There she was in majesterial beauty in white pants, heels, orange hippie blouse that showed firm cleavage, strawberry blonde hair, perfect make up, and unlined forehead. I couldn't believe it. Yes, she had a little tremor, but nothing like an old woman, and when she excused herself she sashayed like Blanche Dubose.
I can't see her in a rest home, can't imagine she'll ever truly age, just float away like a cloud after a rainstorm.
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