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YO MAMA: All those precious baby hats

 


OPINION


I found your little green toque today, the one they gave you at the hospital when you were born. The very first piece of clothing you ever wore. It was so big on you then, like a giant wizard’s hat. I had to keep nudging it up so I could look into your grey-blue eyes.

In a few days, you will be one year old. The toque looks laughably small now, like a doll’s hat. I let you play with it and you study it carefully, picking bits of fuzzy yarn off and putting them in your mouth. You must taste everything these days. Sometimes I look at you now and wonder, who are you and where did you come from? The sleepy newborn in the little green hat feels like another person entirely.

I’ve been going through your baby clothes, tenderly folding them and packing them up in old diaper boxes. You really had a lot of hats. I’ve been lining them up from smallest to largest, all those precious little hats you wore during your first trip around the sun. I loved putting those hats on you, adjusting them with care, knowing your perfect head would be protected from the elements.

That spring, when you were just a newborn, you wore a brown knitted toque made by a friend. It was so soft, softer than a kitten’s fur, but not so soft as you. You wore it while we sat on the deck, wrapped up under a turquoise crocheted blanket, watching hummingbirds visit the feeder. I would rest my cheek on the top of your head and hum you a favourite tune. I thought all the time about what was going on in that head of yours.

Later, as the world warmed, your dad and I got you a big brimmed sun hat. Your skin was so soft and delicate, like creamy white apple blossoms tinted with pink. You looked like a movie star under cover in that sun hat, as if you were in disguise. You sat quietly in the stroller under your big umbrella of a hat, taking the world in. How much could you see then? The baby books said it was only as far as 18 inches — not even an arm’s length. Far enough to see me, pushing the stroller with one hand and reaching out to peak under your hat with the other. Always checking, always admiring.

You also had a little bonnet that I made you before you were born. I imagined you would wear it a lot that first summer, but it was much too big and always fell off your head. I didn’t know back then how small you would be. So much about you was a surprise.

During our autumn walks you wore a red toque with a pompom on it. You got a lot of compliments on that hat, I think because the red accentuated your ocean blue eyes. That hat was the same colour as the crimson maple leaves you liked to look at. We’d sit on a blanket in the yard and you would inspect them like a scientist, tracing the veins with the tip of your finger. You were so curious. You had become more bold and strong willed over the summer, no longer sitting still in your stroller. You wanted to move. You strained to peak over shoulders, struggled to move, ripped off your red hat to feel the sensation of the breeze on your scalp. Whenever I picked you up, your little legs churned the air. 

By wintertime, we had to do something about your habit of pulling off hats. So, we got you a grey fleece cap — kind of like a train conductor’s hat — with a velcro chin strap. You always managed to work the chin strap up far enough to suck on, but you never tried to pull it off. You were smart that way. 

When the snow began to melt I brought out the grey and red crocheted hat that was too big for you the previous spring. My mother got it for you and I couldn’t wait until you were big enough to wear it. You looked so grown up wearing it with the matching sweater, the one with the shiny red buttons. It was around this time that your face changed, seemingly overnight. Suddenly, you didn’t look like a baby anymore. You looked like a little boy.

Before I know it you’ll be wearing baseball hats, beanies, backwards ball caps and bike helmets (I hope). Perhaps you’ll go through a phase in high school where you fancy fedoras (your father did.) One day, I’ll take photos of you in your graduation cap. I can picture you smiling, your blue eyes sparkling beneath the cap, looking out at the world that awaits with the same sense of wonder you had when you were small.

There’s that expression about how we all wear many different hats. I think about how much you have grown and changed this past year, morphing into a person with so much spirit and personality. Your old hats are like little tokens of the person you were last week, last month, last year. Fleeting versions of you, my son, who refuses to stay still.

— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.


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