Aunt Myrtle and the Red Hats

I’ve been thinking a lot about red hats this week so I was taken aback to read a Petrolia Topic article about a local woman named Bertha-Rose Park who is joining a red-hatted flash mob at the Toronto Film Festival.

The synchronicity was not lost on me. You see, my Aunt Myrtle impressed the importance of red hats upon me long before a society had formed around them. Recently, I attended her memorial service and that got me thinking about our mutual encounter with the infamous red hats.

Rather than opt for a traditional service in a church or funeral home after her death this past winter, her family honoured her wishes by holding it in her backyard during the summer, across the lane from the beloved greenhouse business which she had founded. It featured an informal picnic meal followed by a brief, but poignant, eulogy and the committal of her ashes at the base of a newly planted tree. Afterwards, her son invited each generation, starting with her great-grandchildren, to come up and plant a flower in her memory.

As I watched each group of people place their plant carefully in the ground and pack the earth around it with such reverence, I realized that it was a very fitting tribute to a woman who  had spent her years on this earth nurturing others—cultivating the relationships and world around her. In addition to raising her own family, she was a foster mother to over one hundred children, including a mentally-challenged girl whom she eventually adopted and cherished as her own child, and as her obituary pointed out, any young girl or boy who came to her door. Despite having suffered from a life-threatening heart condition since she was a child, or perhaps because of it, Aunt Myrtle had a keen appreciation of and passion for life; she embraced each day to the fullest and approached those days with a sense of joy and celebration. In that regard, she had a lot in common with those red-hatted women that you see in the tearooms.

Aunt Myrtle As A Young Girl

During my childhood, Aunt Myrtle made a point of inviting my cousins and me to her house for summer holidays. Typically, she’d leave the lunch dishes in the sink, and in an era before seatbelts, pack eight or more kids into the car and head to the nearest sunny beach along Lake Huron.  

One summer day, she marched us into Kresge’s, a department store in Sarnia, and bought each of us a red felt cowboy hat. To a rural child growing up in the 1960’s, this was the height of high fashion. As I recall, we swaggered out of Kresge's as if we were the long lost siblings of the Cartwright family on Bonanza. We strutted out those department store doors with our red-behatted heads held high; indeed, so proud and preoccupied with our purchases that we didn't realize that we were walking straight into a torrential downpour of rain. Before we knew what was happening, the felt brims on our hats had drooped like last week’s roses; a flash flood of red dye, rain and tears ran down our distraught faces. Suddenly, my aunt was faced with a pack of howling children. Our new red hats were ruined.

Quickly, she sprang into action, telling us not to worry, she’d fix them. I couldn’t fathom how she’d manage to pull that particular rabbit out of her hat, but later at home, a row of soggy red hats were lined up like toy soldiers; the brims were held together with clothes pins. In my child’s heart, I knew that, despite my aunt’s best efforts, those red hats would never be the same again; as an adult, I recognize that in that moment, my aunt was sending us a powerful message.

Looking back, I understand that the lesson of those red hats was twofold: first, that life is something to be celebrated. Each day is precious. As adults, we have to be responsible for a seemingly endless list of practical things--holding down a job; paying our bills; keeping a household running; insert your most tedious/tiring task here--but we need not plod through life without an exuberant appreciation for the gifts that each day brings us. The Red Hatters have it right in that respect. Based on my own brief childhood encounter, I can assure you that life is infinitely better with a red hat; they are the epitome of fun, especially if they come complete with plastic whistles. 

The second, and equally powerful, lesson is that when things fall apart, as invariably they do sometimes, all need not be lost. Sometimes, hats (and I would argue many other things in life) can--and should--be mended. Although this might seem to be an out-dated idea in today’s throwaway world, I would argue that it’s never too late to apply the clothes pins to our relationships and lives. The onus is on each of us to try, try, try and yes, if necessary, try again.

This moment of epiphany--the wisdom of the red hats--came to me as I sitting there at Aunt Myrtle’s memorial service.

Prior to his marriage to my aunt in the 1950’s, my uncle had married an English war bride. She came to Canada and had a son with him, but like many war brides in that era, she grew homesick in this strange new land and returned to England, taking their son with her. He never saw him again. About a decade ago, my aunt asked me to help her find him. We managed to track down his birth certificate and found some addresses and phone numbers in England, but at the time, this information led to dead ends.

Then, shortly before her death, Aunt Myrtle learned that my uncle’s son had made contact with one of her grandchildren. After his mother died, he began doing Google searches for his birth father; each time he tried, nothing came of it. It would have been so easy for him to grow discouraged and give up his quest; instead, he kept hunting and one day, stumbled across my uncle’s obituary. From there, he was able to track down one of the granddaughters on Facebook. Just prior to her death, my aunt, who had poured so much of her own heart into this search, was told about this new development and she replied, “I think you’ve found him.”

When the memorial service was held seven months later, he, his wife and two adult children flew in from England to be in attendance; in fact, he gave the eulogy for my aunt who had tried so hard to find him. It was a lovely moment to witness and quite moving, in the midst of our collective sadness, to see this new chapter unfolding. What had been torn apart so many years ago was being mended.

Although dark rain clouds rolled across the early evening sky, it didn't rain during the memorial service; at one point, the sun even broke through and in that brief, shining moment, I swear I caught a glimpse of Aunt Myrtle looking down upon us, smiling. It felt like a benediction and a sense of peace settled over me as, in my mind, I tipped my red hat to her in return.