My Favorite Hat

I love hats!  I have several of them, and if my husband would let me, I'd buy several more!  Big hats, small ones, hats with flowers or feathers, hats with netting over the face, winter hats, sun hats, you name it.  I love hats!

But my very favorite hat is...drum roll, please...my Mom Hat!  The reason I like the Mom Hat is that it's never the same.  Oh, sure, sometimes, it's the drab Laundry Hat, or the Dishwashing Hat -- or worse yet, the Playroom Cleaning Hat!  Ick!

Most of the time, though, the Mom Hat is fun, fun, fun!  The Mom Hat is the one I wear when I play with my daughter in the pool, seeing how many times we can volley the beachball back and forth, without it hitting the water (or bouncing out).  It's the one I wear when the kids and I go to the library, and my kids come to show me the books they've found and can't wait to read.  I wear the Mom Hat when we go fun places, like the Parker County Peach Festival a few weeks ago.

Sometimes, the Mom Hat will get a little "dark", if you will, causing me to throw Pop-Its off the balcony at my unsuspecting son.  In case you're not familiar with Pop-It's, they are little bits of paper containing just a small amount of gunpowder and "something else" (?); when you throw them at a solid surface -- say the dining room table where your son is sitting playing games on his father's laptop...or the book your son is holding in his lap as he sits in the recliner and reads -- they explode!  It's a pretty good bang for your buck, pardon my pun.

It's the dark Mom Hat that will cause me to suddenly veer into the path of my son as we walk the aisles of Wal-Mart; there is something pretty comical about watching 6'5" of teenage boy trying to avoid running over his mother.  Trust me.  If you have access to a very tall teenage boy, try it sometime.

Sometimes the Mom Hat has to be firm, telling my children they can't do something they want to do, or telling them they HAVE to do something they don't want to do.  Hey, the Laundry Hat is one size fits all, you know.

But the Mom Hat is also the one I wear when my daughter reminds me that she's not as grown up as she thinks she is, by asking me to read her a story and tuck her in at night.  My Mom Hat is the one I wear when my son prays at church, and I know his Mo and Papaw would be proud of him.  The Mom Hat is the one I wear when my children's teachers at church or school tell me how much they enjoy having my kids in their class; in fact, it's the Mom Hat that keeps my head from getting too big at such times, reminding me that my children aren't just a product of me and my brilliance, but are, in fact, a product of my whole family, my church family and most of all, my God.

The Mom Hat...it goes with any outfit.