The Wedding Hat

My parents have decided that they have a house and garage full of clutter -- and that all of it is stuff that one of the five of us left behind. It's almost true -- we have all left things behind but they have plenty of clutter as well. This may be due to the fact that there is only the two of them living there but they insist on shopping at CostCo. Most of my clutter is buried so deep in the garage there is no real danger that my things will be put on the sidewalk; but, when I asked why they couldn't keep some of the massive amounts of toilet paper and paper towels in the closet, I was told that the closet was full of my things. In fact there was one box that was mine. On the side of the box was printed in my mother's hand: Anna's w. hat.

W. short for wedding.

I had a lovely wedding out doors - to my mother's chagrin it was more than unconventional. I wore a dark green dress with white flowers and granny high heeled shoes. Since it was an outdoor wedding in the summer, I got a hat to go with my outfit. I hadn't planned on flowers, but my little sister got a "crown" for my hat and a small bouquet.

I am not sure why the hat stayed behind. I think the wedding dress is still in my closet.

So, I told my mom I would dispose of the box. I imagined just putting it in the to be donated pile. It's a lovely hat -- only worn once. Then I decided to bring it back with me -- and it has been sitting on my living room floor, waiting for me to make a decision.

I opened the box the other day and I thought about just throwing out the now dried flowers and keep the hat and maybe use it again someday.

Opening the box, a flood of memories came back -- the wedding... the arguments with my family preceding the actual day, the amount of fun the guests had, and the pit in my stomach.

And then the feelings about the marriage came, too -- failure and may be the utter mistake it was to begin with... all recriminations -- why didn't I know better?

I don't know the reason, but I didn't know better.

I still don't know what to do with the hat -- I put it back in the box. I have a slight reprieve as I am house sitting and a friend is staying at my house with the box for another week... the day will come, soon enough, when I need to decide what to do with the wedding hat.