A What's so Happy Birthday

I looked at the calendar today, and I realized yet another birthday is coming up. In mere days, I will turn 23 years old. While 18 is legally the age of adulthood, it felt more like a grace period. It is as if I am trying out the notion of being an adult, without committing to the concept that from this moment on...this is the rest of my life. By 21, a person is offered alcohol with the full support of the state. For me, the four years between my 18th birthday and the very end of my 21st year are a blur of self doubt gripped with budding ego. So here I am as my 22nd year of existence ebbs to a close, and I am left with a restless sense of my grace period coming to a close. With that door shutting, the future seems to be an endless fantasy waiting to be explored.

My hat collection

The older I get, the more hats I own.... The thing I love the most about hats is the quick transformation they offer. One moment, I feel frumpy--a bit boring, then I put on a shag wide brim top hat and my appearance becomes a little funky. Stepping away from the literal notion of wearing a hat, I have recently discovered the other metaphoric hats I own.
At home, I don the bonnet of domestication. I change diapers and do laundry with a settle pride, immersed in the idea of building a home. As I fold towels and sort whites, I have an idealist notion that I am walking in the shoes of a woman circa 1950. I own my role of wife and mother, a concept that I wouldn’t have allowed myself in the past, I realize it is a matter of hats and boxes. By wearing a hat to denote a role, and I inhabit a mental box to regulate my behavior.
My life as become a metaphor of being divided into boxes and in each box is a hat.
As a college student, my hat collection is subdivided between my role as student and student leader. In the classroom I wear a sombrero of education, a light hat with wide brim to catch my teacher’s intellectual droppings. Assuming this role, per class period, I inhabit a box of open-ended acceptance. In this space no assumption can be made without teacher consent and the box’s gospel is covered in six chapters. My opinions are limited to text on hand and every word spoken is phrased as a question awaiting approval.
When I step from the class room, I morph through the use of another hat. The fedora of leadership is a rather outlandish piece of appeal that reflects my cries for attention. In a box of confidence, I can be a problem solver, a confidant, a big sister and Batman to some else’s Robin.
Moving through the motions of my week, I touch on small less pronounced hats. I wear a baseball cap denoting sisterhood. With a brim shading my eyes, in my box, I’m not blind to my brothers’ white lies and half truths that only teenage boys tell. Silly stories of nearly avoided fights and grand plans fill my box.
A counterpart to sisterhood is my cowboy hat of daughter-hood. A costume accessory reflecting an immaturity I will always have standing in my parents’ presence. In the box that is created when I wear this hat, I’m still the idealistic 12 year old. All my experience as an adult washes away to reveal the girl my mother raised.
To some the idea of wearing hats and moving from one emotional/psychological box to another may seem inconceivable. Perhaps this denial is accompanied by a blindness which is a box all its own.