The Little Hat
Today Halle turned nine.
We packed the day the way nine-year-old birthdays demand — rock climbing, her favourite shops, presents, food, excitement — and then, because birthdays apparently don’t cancel existing commitments, hoops and silks this evening too.
By the time we got home, Ste and I collapsed onto the couch. Absolutely done.
I looked at him and said, “This time nine years ago, we had a baby. We became parents.”
“Well,” he said, “at this time the nurses had kicked me out.”
And suddenly I remembered something I hadn’t thought about in years.
Halle’s little hat. The first one the nurses put on her after she was born.
Ste stole it — not really, but he took it home that first night, since I was staying in hospital with Halle and he wasn’t allowed to. He took it so Kira, Kobi, and Mika could smell it, so they’d somehow understand: someone new had arrived. There was a baby now.
And then he slept with that tiny hat under his pillow, because he couldn’t be with us.
Nine years later, sitting beside him on the sofa, I remembered it, and my heart just swelled.
Parenthood is so enormous when you’re standing inside it — the appointments, the packed lunches, the clubs, the shoes outgrown five minutes after you buy them, the car conversations, the arguments, the cuddles, the endless washing. Nine years of a whole human life.
And yet the thing that brings it rushing back is something impossibly small.
A newborn hat. Under a new dad’s pillow. Because he missed his baby.
