The Hat

When my Mother moved into the memory care facility where she now lives, I began sharing stories about her on my Facebook page. I suppose you could say that those posts led to this blog. I saved the posts and will, from time to time, use them as entries on this site.

This is one of those posts.

April 11, 2021

I'm writing letters to My Mam. In an effort to make sure she doesn't feel she has been "dumped and forgotten" (which I believe to be a natural and reasonable response to having your Mother placed in a senior center) I am writing her a letter a day. I have spoken to her on the phone and I believe that, while a phone call now and then will be good, it is wise to send letters because she will have something to read, to challenge her mind, and she will have something tangible to look at, to have, to hold, to keep in a drawer or on her night table. Each letter is typewritten because I have handwriting that even a forensics specialist cannot read, and each letter is one page long because I don't want to make her work too hard. Each letter is about something specific, like my upcoming visit, the pandemic, and vaccines, jury duty... they are all pre-dated and will be printed, signed, enveloped with a photo inside, stamped, and ready to drop in the mail on the correct day.

The letter I am writing now is about my new hobby of art collecting, about the negatives I have been buying, scanning, and restoring. I was just writing to her about how my best friend of thirty years, Brady, got me into this and how he and I just acquired a color transparency of Leslie Caron. We are going to work on the restoration together and it will be really fun, and we both love Leslie Caron. I was writing to Mama that Brady has a devotion to the book, the play, the movie Gigi, and I found myself hearing her laughing. I wondered if I should remind her... should I tell her... and I think I am going to.

Growing up a gay child, tween, teen, I loved all the old musicals. The television stations in places we lived weren't always quite apt to show the musicals I loved, but they always showed THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT. The final movie clip at the end of That's Entertainment is "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" from Gigi. Every time... EVERY time that movie was on (or the movie Gigi, for that matter) Maurice Chevalier would be singing the song and the camera would pan away from him. Louis Jordan and Leslie Caron would walk into the frame, she in her floral, form-fitting lilac Cecil Beaton gown. And every time she saw this... EVERY SINGLE TIME... my Mama would say: "STUPID hat." She didn't say it to anyone in particular, but she would say it, sometimes with a sneer of disappointment, sometimes with a head shake, sometimes just plain as day: "STUPID hat." Growing up, you could count on the networks showing That's Entertainment at least once a year, and Gigi at least once every couple of years - so, just in my high school and early college years, when I lived at home, I could count on my Mama seeing that hat once or twice a year.

Til the day I die, when I see that hat, whether it's in Gigi, That's Entertainment, or some clip on some special on TCM, you can count on me carrying on a tradition started by my Mama:

STUPID hat.