As I said, I have more to say about the hat.
Getting back to the beginning of that outing: I was definitely on the lookout for some kind of hat when we went into town. The tropical sun was merciless, and I don't have nearly as much hair on top as I used to. We hadn't gone far from the car when my eye was caught by piles and piles of hats at the entrance of a shop -- neatly nested stacks of cheap-looking local-style straw hats for tourists -- straw hats with colored bands. They pulled me like a magnet. I didn't even pause to make sure that somebody in the family knew where I was going.
I had to pick a good one. My vacation hat was not going to have a black band, for example. I needed something bright, ideally multicolored. The hats with rainbow bands all seemed to be too small. I began shifting hats from stack to stack, peering inside them one after another. Just as I was beginning to get discouraged, a sales lady came and helped me. In no time I had what I needed -- a big enough hat with a mostly red band -- and I happily hurried away to find the family.
I don't want to make too much of this hat. It's just a hat. For the rest of the trip I wore it a lot, because, well, I needed protection from the sun. Also because it was my hat. I started calling it "my silly tourist hat."
During our first visit with Amadi's birthmother and her kids, I omitted the hat even when we went out for a walk on the sunny streets. I was self-conscious about looking like a foreigner who foolishly tries to dress up like a local. Also, I wore shiny black dress shoes that day. We had the idea that, although we are in the habit of going barefoot indoors at home, it might be offensive to do so when receiving guests in a strange country; and I took this principle one step further and put on my good shiny shoes instead of my shabby tattered sneakers that day.
When packing for the trip, I had stuck those "grownup Daddy shoes" in the suitcase. At the time, that choice on my part had struck me as odd. I had tentatively classified it as one of those irrational things that people do when preparing for a trip, as they try to fend off the anxiety that goes with heading into the unknown. On the other hand, I also thought that it might have been a perfectly sensible choice, in which case maybe my having doubts about it could be classified as one of those irrational things people do when preparing for a trip ... When Tesi saw me unpacking the shoes in Antigua, it became clear that she also found it an odd choice. But I think my reasoning was sound: (a) even a person like me who always packs light for a trip should probably take more than one pair of shoes along, (b) it's true that I don't wear these shoes much at home, but it's also true that they are very comfortable, (c) if I want to dress up just a little better than usual at any point (for example when meeting the birth family), these shoes will help, and (d) while the sight of me in shoes like these might startle those who know me well, it is a completely unremarkable sight for the rest of the world.
(I call them "grownup Daddy shoes" because that's what they feel like. I suppose the right term is "dress shoes." They are extremely plain, but shiny. When I put them on, or when I put any dress shoes on, it almost feels as if I'm putting on a coat and tie. And putting on a coat and tie feels like putting on a costume, like I'm trying to disguise myself as a grownup. For many men these would be everyday shoes. Certainly in my father's day they would have been. )
I was glad that I wore them that day in the house in Antigua; it did not feel odd at all. On the other hand, when the same visitors came back the next day I felt relaxed enough to revert to my everyday scruffy black sneakers, and also to wear the silly tourist hat when we went out in the sun for another walk around the neighborhood.
I don't know the language of hats any better than I know the language of ties or dress shoes or sports jackets. Sport jackets? (Sport jackets! Those casual things that you wear -- with a tie! -- when you're not dressing up in a suit or something! Is a tweed jacket a sport jacket?) Since our trip I've been trying to learn a little bit about hats, not so much because of my straw hat, but more because a Facebook friend, Polly's husband Andrew, started reporting on the comments he gets from strangers when he goes out on the streets of New York in 2014 in a fedora. After some internet research, now I at least know roughly what a fedora looks like. I think maybe I could distinguish a fedora from a stodgy old homburg, for example, but the finer distinctions are beyond my reach. I think of Lord Peter Wimsey in Dorothy L. Sayers's Have His Carcase, looking at the murder victim's hat:
"Last year's hat, reblocked, with new ribbon. Shape, a little more emphatic than is quite necessary. Deduction: not wealthy, but keen on his personal appearance."
I'm pretty sure that back in, say, the early 60's, my father wore a hat when he went to work. I see him in a dark suit (or maybe just dark pants and a dark sports jacket), with a white shirt and a tie and grownup Daddy shoes and a hat. A fedora, I suppose? At the end of the day he would walk into the house and hang up his hat. Also he would whistle a happy little tune that signaled "I'm home!" Six rapid notes that ran together, hi-lo-hi-lo-hi-loooo. Sol-mi-sol-mi-sol-mi. Such a familiar and welcome sound!
By the late 60's the world was changing. I think he started dressing a little more casually for the office. When I try to picture him coming home from work in those days, the scene is in color rather than black and white. I have to ask my sisters what they remember about his hats and shoes and jackets.
I believe that my silly tourist hat is of the type that is called a "Panama hat". I understand that Panama hats originated in Ecuador, and that the very best ones are so fine that they are waterproof and can be rolled up small for packing without doing them any harm. Mine is the other extreme: probably such a bad cheap imitation of a Panama hat that as far as a real hat person is concerned it doesn't deserve the name. Anyway, I wasn't about to pack it in a bag when we left Guatemala. It was either wear it or leave it behind.
I could have left it in the house in Antigua. Come to think of it, there were some straw hats already there. Quite likely they were meant for our use, left there by the landlord or by previous visitors. Why did I even buy a hat? It's true that there was one hat in the house that we didn't think we should touch. It graced the head of a piece of found art in the living room: a big piece of a tree with raised arms. But I think I could have borrowed one of the others. Still, I wanted my very own vacation hat. And, although I didn't know if I would ever wear it again, I wanted to take it with me when we left for home.
On airplanes there was no problem tucking the hat into an overhead compartment, but in airports I wore it on my head. It was just one more thing to juggle when going through security.
We flew from Guatemala City to Boston by way of Miami, just like that other time when we were bringing baby Amadi home. Somehow we had forgotten about the tedious part where you have to recover your checked bags, lug them through immigration and customs, and check them again for the next flight.
Back in the year 2000 our experience in Miami was nightmarish: we had a narrow window of time between flights, we were slowed down at immigration by having to show adoption papers, and after customs we had to get ourselves, our two-month-old baby, and all of our luggage to the other end of the huge airport in a big hurry using muscle power alone.
This time it was much better: we had more time, there was now a shuttle train from one end of the terminal to the other, and our baby had become a big thirteen-year-old who could walk on her feet. Also, we got some streamlined service because 86-year-old Gerry cleverly requested a wheelchair. But it's still a pretty horrible airport.
(At the baggage carousel: Asa and I are waiting, waiting, waiting for the bags. A chatty man next to us: "Where are you guys from?" "Boston" "Oh. Well, at least you have good sports teams there. Hey, you have a game this weekend." [Think. What is he talking about? Let's see, what time of year is it? It's January. Oh, I bet he's talking about football playoffs. Wow, I didn't even know the Patriots were in the playoffs this year. ] "I don't really pay much attention to any sport except baseball. Sometimes not even that. Where are you from?" "Chicago. Miami airport is the worst airport in the world. I've been coming through here every six months for years. Once they stole all my Christmas presents. Oh, they weren't worth much, but still, they were Christmas presents ..." )
Besides the shuttle train, the other nice surprise was the fancy machine for processing your passport. I think these are very new. I don't know if all the US points of entry have them yet. You stand in front of one of a number of big kiosk thingies, and you hold your passport face down on a screen so it can be scanned. Then the machine tells you to look it in the eye, and it amazingly adjusts itself to your height (even if you are in a wheelchair!), and it takes your picture and prints it out with other data on a slip of paper, which you take to the human agent at the booth on your way out of the hall. I was the first of the five of us to undergo this process, so I was not exactly ready when the shutter clicked. I didn't think to take off my reading glasses, which I had put on to study the fascinating gadget and to read the directions it was giving me. I didn't think to take the hat off, either. But I did manage to look right into the lens, and to keep my eyes open. I came off looking like some kind of inept but cheerful spy. I was really really hoping that we would end up with a copy of the picture to take home, but no: it stayed with the human agent at the booth. I would have liked to use it as my new Facebook profile.
It wasn't until after the trip that it dawned on me how much my hat had to do with my father. In my youth the annual family vacation was a high point of the year for my parents, my sisters, and me. Every August we would head for the woods and go camping: either at drive-in campgrounds, or on islands, or in later years on a sort of houseboat. (We sometimes kept a journal, writing down some memories together each day as we went along. One of my sisters recently came across the home-made Ship's Log that I made for my father one year. It was made of an actual log, cut in half, hinged, and filled with blank pages. ) And, now that I think of it, he always had a vacation hat. He might use the same one two years in a row, but it seems to me that he would often just pick one up on our travels when the mood struck, or when the right hat appeared. It served to keep the sun off his bald spot, and it was also an emblem of family fun and Daddy in vacation mode. The one I remember best was the type of striped cloth cap that is associated with locomotive engineers.
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