Please Remove Your Hat

I love hats! Not the kind that ladies sometimes wear across the pond while they're baking scones and having tea in honor of a royal wedding.  Not visors as those are too tight on the head and make me think of tourists in big floral printed shorts as they shuffle along in throngs of people at popular places like Disney.  The hats I love are often colorful and always of the baseball or golf kind and never have Mickey Mouse ears.  I rarely go anywhere without a hat on and I often have one on here in the house.  It's just part of who I am, and those closest to me in my life know this.

So I imagine it was a bit of a surprise when Storm and I walked off the airplane, me without a hat,  past the security points, and into the view of a smiling Meredith who was right there to welcome us to her home state.  Can you sum up a year long friendship in the making with just one big embrace?  I don't know, but that alone was worth the trip, and I'm glad she had seen enough pictures to recognize me "underneath the hat" that I was not wearing!

I prepared myself for this visit with Meredith and Jack differently than I have for other vacations of yesteryear.   First of all, Storm and I started shopping for some much needed clothes and personal items starting at Christmastime, for both of our birthdays, etc., and finished just a couple weeks before our trip.  I also slowly started packing weeks ahead of time as I learned via YouTube how to roll most of our clothes and tuck them all snugly in these interesting new-to-me-things called packing cubes.  In order not to exceed airline limits and be charged an arm and a leg, Storm and I got approximate poundage from each bag by hanging them from my fishing scale first here at home. Ha!

I also got my hair cut and highlighted just 3 days before our trip.  Big deal, Windy!  It is a big deal when it's been 7 years since I have been to  a salon of any kind and I got 6 inches cut off.   I'm not trying to look younger, I'm just trying to look a little newer off the assembly line!  So this new look with my clothes and my hair has me feeling a bit different which I find very interesting because I usually absolutely 100 percent do not give a hoot.  If it makes my story more believable, I will tell you that I drew the line at getting a manicure and pedicure.  If I had done one more thing in preparation for this trip that was outside of my normal behavior, I would have been too tired to drive to the airport!

 I only wore a hat a few times that week and it was only when we were in the sun for small windows of time.  There was something very freeing about that...... not that my hat keeps me trapped, but I'm realizing that while it keeps me covered physically, I think it was helping me hide emotionally from other humans!

Here's another thing about hats with brims/bills in the front:  they restrict your vision.  I hit my head getting in and out of the car all the time, bump my head on cabinets, and I even ran into a couple of those big silver weights hanging in various places in the produce aisle at the grocery store!   I did that twice in one day!   UGH!

So, off with my hats for my vacation, (although I admit they were in my suitcase) exposing my new hair to the world, (as if they noticed or cared!) wearing mostly newer clothes in a state that Storm and I have never been to before, and meeting friends we've never seen before.  What a freeing experience!

Throughout our week with Jack and Meredith, one of my most favorite places to be was in their kitchen with the four of us.  I watched Jack cook....... it's quite something.  He's so relaxed and not all rushing around and crabby despite the fact that there were strangers in his home for whom he was cooking.   I was comfortable right away with Jack so I asked him a cooking question or two testing out his responses because not everybody wants to be asked what they are doing or why or what that ingredient is.  Heck, I don't normally even care enough to ask such questions especially before I've had 15 minutes to myself and my first cup of coffee drained.  I can see where that would be stressful to a chef in his/her own home.  But, Jack answered me gently and thoroughly.  I wanted to do more asking, but I didn't want him to think I was weird, so I mostly watched him. (I wasn't staring!).    Through breakfasts and dinners he was content and focused on his work, but still relaxed.  He shared with us that he enjoys everything about preparing and presenting a meal, from the choosing of ingredients, to the marinating, to the chopping, cooking, grilling, serving, eating...... and including clean up!  What?!!  I never thought about the cleanup being anything other than a chore that makes me kind of miss out on the joy of my having prepared a nice dinner for Storm in the first place.  Hmmmmm. 

If you're wondering where Meredith was during all of this, the answer is right there keeping Storm and me company with chatting, setting tables fit for kings and queens, and being Jack's right hand man woman.  Those two floated in and out and around their kitchen in a practiced yet informal kind of dance.  He was working on the main courses, and she with her left handed chopping and slicing and serving cheese and fruit trays.  Every once in a while we lost track of her when she got distracted by the increasingly intoxicating ripeness of her beloved peaches.  We'd lose her, but then we'd hear a little breathless whisper, "my peaches" and there she was again planning to serve those peaches for dessert accompanied by delicious baked goods that she baked I don't even know when!  I am convinced that Jack and Meredith are kitchen ninjas!

 It's so interesting to see how other people operate in their own homes -- how we all eat dinner, yes, but how that process can be smooth and peaceful instead of hurried and stressed.  Now that I am home I have been to the grocery store more times than I have all year ....carefully choosing select cuts of meat, looking for Jack's kind of spices, taking in the scents and colors in the produce area, and feeling completely lost yet wonderfully overwhelmed in the cheese section of my own grocery store.  Who knew there were so many different kinds of cheeses?!!!  Not me!

I like to think that I saw some helpful methods in Jack's and Meredith's home because  my hat wasn't on to get in  my way.  It's silly to think I would have missed much visually had I worn my hat as usual, but I am not kidding that I believe it made me more receptive to really being in the moment with Storm, Jack, and Meredith and noticing some healthy practices that they employ in their home that I thought I'd like to emulate in Storm's and mine.   I like to think that by opening myself up physically, I felt uncovered emotionally, but safe and comfortable enough among precious friends to ask questions about things that I truly did not know, but I so desperately wanted to learn. The hat experience was real for me, but I think it can also be considered symbolic ...... if you wear any kind of protective covering like I do, maybe once in a while, please remove your hat so you can have an entirely different perspective.