Even I had to admit that the forlorn looking cap, sitting a top the five gallon water jug into which I throw my change, had seen better days.
The color is faded from what I used to call sunshine yellow into a sort of mustard. The crown was no longer what is referred to as low crown, but rather it was now slouch. The brim was worn and threadbare, but it still had that perfect curvature. The labeling was dirty and another trip through the washing machine would not make it less so. That the sweat band had performed as designed could not be denied as there was a rather pronounced dark and irregular band about it. I laughed as I examined the seam I glued to preserve it just a little while longer--three years ago.
The front label clearly said Cape Cod 02, and for the last 10 years it was my favorited piece of head wear, and that is going some as at last count I had 25 hats. I am a hat guy, I almost never am without one. And this is the one I would reach for when going out to work in the yard, walk the dog, watch the kids games when they were young. It was perfectly comfortable and its sunshine yellow tint brought sunshine to me. I would wear it in the rain, I would wear it under a balaclava in the winter. I sometimes would sit down for dinner while wearing it, and no one would say a word, it was me and of me.
I don't know if it was my favorite because of where I got it. Cape Cod being one of my favorite places in the world, sand and sea and skies as blue as a sapphire. But I do know that the cap hiked to the top of a few mountains with me, if a few can be called more than 100 .. At the end of a bike ride I would reach for it when I took off my helmet. It went camping with me. It saw kids through high school and one through college. It would sit perched on the back of my head when I drove her off to a far away city to start her own life. It protected me from the sun when I painted the house and fixed the roof. When I first wore it my children were in the peak of childhood and they were swimming in ponds on Cape Cod chasing after little crabs in the bay and in late August , when the temperatures of the summer began to cool and the breezes in the evening would find us on a beach flying kites I would be found wearing my cap. Despite its worn and tattered appearance, it is the one article of clothing that my wife never once suggested as being deserving of disposal.
In a few months when I again vacation on Cape Cod, I will look for a fitting place to leave my cap behind, for it too is deserving of a return home and a place of rest. I hope someone will come across it hung from a fence or on a beach near a pond and wonder what is it all about. As for me, I know what it is all about.
