Veterans in Hats and Bare-Headed Widows

I take myself out to lunch quite often in good driving months and this week was no exception. Often I’m struck by how many older guys I run across who are wearing baseball hats proclaiming that they are veterans and if you could hear the jumble of thoughts going through my head when I see them, you’d probably be shocked. I get the whole proud to have served thing and how the hat elicits strangers to say, “thank you for your service” and how veterans often stop one another to compare service stats but it also makes me sad and stirs up thoughts I’d rather not have. And I wonder how many of these guys are letting their hats proclaim that their few years in the service were the most significant thing that happened in their entire lives. Do you think I’m being unpatriotic or anti-military or disrespectful to question the message a person’s head gear is expressing?

The sad truth is for many veterans of the Vietnam War it was the most significant and life changing thing they went through in their roughly 60+ years of living. The controversies surrounding the war and the dismissive way our servicemen were treated for many years was different than after previous wars. At least in this country. After WWII the French had collective amnesia about their own dark history. Exhibit A of many: The Vél d'Hiv Roundup when the French police did Hitler’s bidding and rounded up their own countrymen---thousands of Jewish people living in Paris including nearly 4,000 children and shipped them off to Auschwitz. The children were separated from their parents before they got on the trains and when the children got to Auschwitz they were marched directly to the ovens. It happened in July of 1942 and it took until 1995 for the country to officially acknowledge the part France played in delivering so many of their own citizens to their deaths.

I suppose the reason the veteran hats bother me is because they remind me that I can’t live in a bubble where everything is a Disney movie. Letting it go when we should never forget might work for many things but not when it comes to the atrocities that follow on the heels of unfettered hate. In our current political climate it's easy to see how intolerance can creep into public policies that, in turn, could lead to unspeakable acts. I guess that’s one of the good things about old men wearing veteran hats, they remind us not forget those who fought for---hopefully----noble causes. Admittedly, the line between noble causes and self-serving lust for power were clearer during the Civil War, WWI and WWII. Not so much with the Vietnam War. We were lied to. We trusted our leaders and our returning servicemen paid a price for those lies. 

I’ve never thanked a veteran for his service. Why can’t I bring myself to do that? I see others do it and it seems so easy-peasy for them---like a greeting and a handshake. Hello, nice to meet you. Have a nice day. I can’t presume to know what that hat represents to the person wearing it or to the person doing the thanking. Maybe I’d presume too much, maybe not enough. A military hat is not a like college t-shirt on a forty year old, balding guy where you can safely guess the shirt presents a carefree time in his life when he had time to play sports and flirt with the campus cutie pies. It’s not like a hat from a concert or a souvenir hat from a place where you left your heart and half the money in your wallet. 

My husband had a large collection of hats with logos and t-shirts with sayings on the front. It was a big deal every morning to decide what mood he was in when he picked out his fashion choices, especially after his stroke when he couldn’t communicate in other ways. But reading a person’s mood by the messages on his clothing never worked with a friend of ours who, when asked about the logo on his shirt replied, “I don’t know what it is. I buy cheap shirts at the Salvation Army so I can throw them out when they get too grubby to wear.” 

I’ve often wondered what message I’d want to wear on a hat, if I could design one that sums up the most significant thing that happened in my entire life. Sexual abused as a toddler, rape survivor later on? No, those things happened to me but they never defined me. Same goes for surviving the death of my parents and husband. Those things helped make me stronger, but they don’t define me either. Caregiver to a stroke survivor? Now, if I could figure out how to put that on a hat that might work. I stepped up to the plate to care for my severely disabled husband in a way that gave him the best quality of life anyone could have under the circumstances and I am proud of those twelve and a half years. If all that would fit on a hat, I’d no longer be a bare-headed widow. ©

Hats, Contractors and More Hats

My Red Hat Society Chapter will be fourteen years old this fall and I was a founding member but two years later I had to drop out because I couldn’t leave my wheelchair bound husband alone for more than two hours and that didn’t mesh well with the out-of-town outings the group was doing. Fast forward to after Don passed away and I found my way back into the group and to this week when I took part in a long standing yearly event…helping the residents of our adopted nursing home become honorary members of our chapter. We bring red visors and bling and marry the visors and bling of their choosing together using our trusty glue guns. Cookies and punch are part of the deal. We also fill holiday goodie bags for all the residents three times a year, do a cupcake and slow motion bingo party in the fall and we have volunteers who rotate memorabilia in and out of a showcase. I’ve never volunteered to do that because, I guess, I’m too picky (or selfish) about where I leave my antiques and collectibles.

Last year I felt too old to be at our visor party, like I could easily be mistaken for one of the resident and as the event got closer this year I gave myself a good scolding lest negativity found a comfortable chair inside my head again. It worked. I went knowing I could do this! I could smile at the guy who took ten cookies off the sugar-free tray but still wanted more when I was passing around the regular cookies. I could be exasperated with the woman who wanted to hoard the whole bag of stick-on bling before it could be passed around to the others. I could laugh at the fact that my chapter sisters all were required to wear rubber gloves to set up the cookie trays but when it came time to pass them out half the residents mauled a number of cookies before making their final choices. As I drove home, I wondered which one I’d be in the future---the cookie hoarder or the bling hoarder? Either way, I hope I’m good natured about it like the guy was. He knew he was doing wrong but he wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity. The woman was a bit of a bitch. If she’d had a fly swatter handy I would have gotten smacked when I got near her.

I got my first estimate on the cost of replacing my roof. It was from the company that did my neighbor’s in one day and they called me cold canvasing the neighborhood. I read through 200 online reviews after making the appointment, most were happy but there were 4-5 people complaining that the company wouldn’t do an estimate without husbands being present with their wives. That explained why the sales rep making the appointment made a point of saying twice, “I’ll see you AND Levi at 2:00.” On my outgoing phone message I say, “You have reached Jean and Levi…” After Don died, I didn’t want my message to give away the fact that I was living alone, so I added the dog’s name when I took my husband’s off the message. The company must have called once when I wasn’t home and assumed Levi was my husband.

After I introduced the guy to my Might Schnauzer the look on his face was priceless and I was prepared for the little-woman-can’t-understand-estimates treatment. I didn’t get it but he did ask if I was related to---and he named my brother. “Yes!” I replied. “How do you know him?” “We did his roof last year. Let’s call him,” he said as he pulled my brother’s contact information up on his phone and put it on speaker. Thankfully, my brother wasn’t home because the last thing I wanted to do is listen to two guys "help me" decide if I should spend $14,400 on a new roof. I am woman. I make my own decisions thank you very much! I decided that what looked like gender bias in the reviews was just the company’s awkwardness in wanting all the legal home owners present so they don’t have to do their presentation twice. Still…. The company has an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau and while I was prepared not to be won over by the sales pitch, I was impressed enough to keep them in the running. 

Yesterday I woke up with snow on the ground but spring supposedly will be here on the weekend. In the meantime, I packed up my knitting in hopes that will signal Mother Nature that’s it’s time to get her tail in gear and bring us some warm weather and tulips. In the past few months I’ve made twenty-eight hats for my family---for next Christmas---although there are four I might do over if I still don’t like them in the fall. My mom made hats for everyone every year and I never appreciated her efforts until I tackled the job this year. I used my mom’s looms and the hats might be a tad out of fashion but with their double thickness they are warmer than bread in a toaster. Darn, now I wish I had some bread in the house! I haven’t had carbs in so long I’m dreaming about them. ©

 

 

 

The set I don't like.