I was helping Mom with a house purge when I was in my thirties, and I found what looked like a little light-blue doll-sized rubber beret with a tiny rolled rim. I figure it was hardware; Mom held on to every piece of useless hardware just in case she might need it later.
So I asked, “What is this?”
Mom seemed annoyed. “What does it look like?”
“A doll’s hat?”
I don’t remember her answer, in fact, I forgot all about it till last night when I was in the hardware store searching for that very same bit of hardware junk.
As I explained to the middle-aged woman who greeted me, I was there to buy something that “looked like” a diaphragm to cap off my uterus piñata.
The greeter suggested the plumbing aisle.
I searched and searched, but I never found the hardware my Mom had. “Man,” I thought, “I wonder what happened to that. It looked just like a diaphragm.”
That’s when it occurred to me that Mom’s hardware was probably just what it looked like. I don’t know why I never thought Mom might use a diaphragm. She had sex. I suppose because she had only the one good hand. Anyway, at that realization I stopped searching in the hardware store for something that looked “just like a diaphragm” and bought a dark blue toilet flappy thing I could paint pink and repurpose.
3 responses to “The Little Hat”
I’m surprised that your mom’s was light blue. Every single one I’ve ever seen has been pink or beige-y pink.
Of course you didn’t think it was a diaphragm. She was your *mother*. Intellectually knowing that she had sex and having it pop into your mind unbidden are two completely different things.
That’s what I always used. Never had an unwanted pregnancy.
Tami – I KNOW! I looked through photos to find a blue one, and I couldn’t. It’s blue in my memory. (Maybe it was a doll hat.)
Hattie – I have to say, I look at my fingers, and I know my vagina, and I just don’t see how it gets all the way up there, unless there’s some kind of musket ramrod that comes with it. Otherwise, there’d be a gap that sperm could swim right around.