THE GOODBYE HAT

The boy always kept the gift his Grandpa gave him

When I was a little boy and didn’t know nothing

I was a real cry baby.

I cried when mamma wouldn’t give me a cherry popsicle.

I cried when my favorite cartoon was over.

And I cried when Grandma and Gramps had to go home.

I cried, as my Gramps used to say, “at the drop of a hat.”

When I was little and didn’t know nothing I went to kindergarten

and after a week or two I got to visit my very best friend Juan Rodriguez.

He showed me his toys. He showed me how to make a taco.

He showed me the gigantic Mariachi guitar his Daddy played.

He showed me all his secrets

but he didn’t show me the most important thing.

“Where are your goodbye hats?” I asked him.

I thought he was holding out on me.

Turned out he didn’t even have one.

Turned out he never even heard of such a thing.

I felt pretty bad for him until my next best friend Billy Thorston

told me just about the same thing.

He’d never had a goodbye hat. Not one. In his whole life.

Well I felt darn bad for all my friends.

Then I felt kind of special because I had a whole closet full.

And I showed them.

I’d open my closet door and show them all my goodbye hats

each hanging just so on a peg.

“Each in their place of honor” as my Gramps used to say.

There was the New York Yankees baseball cap.

The red red Jacque Goostow explorer hat.

The Billy The Kid cowboy hat.

The Green Bay cheese head hat.

The Pirate hat. The Davey Crockett Coonskin hat.

The Sherlock Holmes double-billed hat.

And right about then I saw

I was making my new friends feel pretty bad.

So I stopped showing them the goodbye hats.

It was something “Between you and me” as Gramps used to say.

See when I was little and didn’t know nothing

Gramps and Grandma lived way far out in the country

where “foxes run in the fields,

apples grow so low you can reach up and pluck your dinner

and when everybody goes to sleep

cows stop mooing and talk sense to each other”

as Gramps used to say.

Well you can imagine I enjoyed his company.

So each time he left I would bawl like a baby.

Like I just lost my best friend.

Like the circus was coming to town and I was going to miss it.

So each time they came over Gramps was wearing a new hat.

“Haven’t you never heard of a goodbye hat?” he asked.

“Don’t you know nothing?”

Well I never had and I supposed I didn’t.

He said: “They can stop a kid from crying when he says goodbye.”

And I said, How.

And he said, “Magic.”

He said, “Partner. Here’s the deal.

No tears — and you get the goodbye hat. It’s yours.”

Well I was little and didn’t know nothing

but I knew a good deal when I heard one.

So when they left I was biting my lip and practically choking

I was so afraid I was gonna cry.

But I didn’t and Gramps popped that black New York Yankee cap

right on my noggin.

I was so proud of not crying I wore that hat for days.

And I never cried again when they had to say goodbye.

Because each time Gramps and Grandma came over

he wore a new one.

“How’s your goodbye hat collection coming, boy?”

And I’d take him to my closet and we’d stand there admiring them.

And each time they left I’d have me a new hat.

Well, when I was a little boy and didn’t know nothing

I thought everything lasted forever:

Vacation, candy bars, even snowmen.

But there came a day when Gramps and Grandma didn’t visit us,

we had to visit them.

Gramps had got a hospital disease and we had to do something

called “paying our respects.”

Well I don’t know what I was expecting

but it sure wasn’t a little yellow man in a blue bed.

He didn’t look like Gramps at all

until he smiled and said, “Hey Partner.”

We stood around his bed and there was a lot of kissing.

Then he said he needed a minute alone with me.

He said, “Partner, I’m going where there’s no coming back.

You understand?”

Well, I thought I did.

“But I got something for you,” Gramps said. “It’s the last goodbye hat.

And it’s better than all the rest.”

Why, I asked.

“Because it’s even more magic.”

How? I asked.

“It’s invisible” Gramps said. “I’m the only one who can see it.

And only we will know it’s there.”

He put it on my head and said,

“Now step into the light there and let me look at you.”

I did.

“Partner,” he said. “That’s the best one yet.

Remember: This is between you and me.”

And that’s how I got the last goodbye hat.

And I never took it off.

— Patrick O’Leary