The Hat Trick

                                      
We all wear different hats.

Almost immediately after my friend and I sat down for lunch the other day, the waitress appeared, looking not particularly happy to be there. It was early and the crowd was fairly thin. I have to admit I didn't give it that much thought, but I wondered for a moment why she looked so stressed.

The mystery was solved quickly.  "I know you," she said, looking at me almost accusingly. My brain kicked into its own pitiful version of high gear, and on closer inspection she did indeed look vaguely familiar. She clarified the connection for me -- our sons were the same age, had played tennis together in high school -- and I had no trouble recalling our first meeting. She had been a sharply dressed little pistol, spiffy in her tight designer jeans. I remember feeling awkward and dowdy in my Gap jeans and sweatshirt. She was divorced but seemed to be doing well. She had her own business. She was thin. She was put together, at a time when my life was just about to unravel.

I knew how difficult this had to be for her, serving lunch in a neighborhood restaurant to her peers, two ladies who could afford to be sitting at the table rather than standing over it in a white waitress apron. I wanted so badly to reassure her, to let her know I was on her team, trailer park bound.

As we left the restaurant (and my life savings in what was probably an overly exorbitant tip), we encountered a parade of ladies in red hats. Red straw hats, red hats with feathers, red wool caps, even a red baseball cap. Red hats, a self-proclaimed hallmark of the "over fifty" crowd, ladies who've made it past, well, something. I had bought my friend Barb a red hat, years ago, when she turned fifty. She was proud of her red hat; at a birthday dinner she threw for herself, she looked at us, her friends, and said if she died the next day she would feel as if her life had been complete. Fulfilling, maybe, but complete? I think not. Breast cancer took her less than two years later, leaving her red hat without a place to roost and leaving us, her friends, without a clue as to why she, of all people, should be taken so soon.

The red hat crowd we encountered the other day had clearly been sporting their fiery head gear for a long time. Retired ladies in their sixties and seventies, they wore their hats with panache and great pride, having made it past something, well, a lot more daunting than "fifty." Much to our delight, they assured me and my friend that we could wear pink hats until we reached the red hat milestone. Thanks for the compliment, ladies, but we have earned the red, and next time we go to lunch we just might be wearing it.

My "ladies who lunch" hat, no matter what the color, might soon be replaced by something a bit more tattered. But, like the well heeled businesswoman turned waitress, I will hold my head up, no matter what sits on top of it.