My Writing Hat

I wear a hat when I write. It's a white crocheted sun hat with a little flower on it. I don't wear a hat because my office is particularly sunny or because I'm trying to compensate for a bad hair day; I wear a hat because it's part of my writing ritual.

Last summer I took a class about how to make writing more of a habit. The instructor suggested one way to really get into the writing mindset is to have a ritual of some sort that triggers the senses and says to my brain: "Keri, it's time to write." I tried a bunch of different things before I chose my writing hat. First I thought when I sat down to write I would light a scented candle, and after a while, every time I smelled that candle my brain would be ready to write. I went to Target and found a candle that smelled nice. It smelled just as nice when I burned it. But it also made me sneeze. And sneeze. And sneeze. So I scrapped the candle idea.

Then I thought maybe my sense of taste might get me into writing mode. I decided I would eat black licorice only when writing, and the taste of black licorice would entice me into a creative frenzy. Unfortunately, I love black licorice way too much to only eat it while I'm writing. Plus I figured that snacking while writing is probably more like mindless eating, and I didn't want to develop any bad habits whilst trying to establish a good habit.

After that I was stumped. Fortunately, I remembered a scene from the movie Little Women where Jo is writing a play in the attic, and as she writes, she wears a special hat. Aha! Thus the writing hat idea was born. As I rifled through my hat collection, which is surprisingly expansive for someone who doesn't really wear hats in the first place, I can across my white crocheted sun hat and knew it was going to be my writing hat. You see, it's not just any ordinary hat; it has memories behind it.

Back in early 2003, I was working as an English teacher in Beijing, China, as was my youngest brother. At the time of the Chinese New Year, we had about a month off of school, so we decided to go to Thailand for a change of scenery. We first went to Bangkok, which was lush with foliage and colorful flowers--a lovely contrast from the drab brown of Beijing. We did some sightseeing in Bangkok, but we really wanted to escape the city and cleanse our lungs with some clean air, so we headed down to the island of Koh Samui, where the European tourists sunned themselves on the beach but rarely set foot in the sea. I walked by the sea at night, listening to the whoosh whoosh of the waves over the sand and contemplating how easy it would be for the sea to swallow me up in its dark vastness. It was less than two years later when a tsunami that came barreling across the very same sea did swallow people up, though not on Koh Samui.

On Koh Samui I tried my hand at sea kayaking around the jagged rock formations surrounding the island as if they were dropped there from the sky. After steering my sea kayak in circles, I figured I'd be better off on land and so hiked to waterfalls and pineapple plantations and temples.

From Koh Samui, we island-hopped over to Koh Phi Phi, a tiny island filled with twenty-something tourists clad in cut-off shorts and scuba fins. My brother and I decided to sign up for scuba diving lessons and soon found ourselves 20 meters under the sea staring wide-eyed at reef sharks and clown fish and corals in a dizzying array of colors. I didn't want to leave Koh Phi Phi. I was captivated by the deeply tanned islanders who hauled carts down the dirt roads barefoot, yelling "beep, beep!" as they passed; I was intrigued by the fishing boats left forlorn in the sand when the tide went out at sunset, each its own desert island; and I was left speechless by the unspoiled beauty of the rocky cliffs along the shoreline.

The main "road" of Koh Phi Phi was crowded with shops selling everything from flip flops to kayaks, and when I spotted the white crocheted sun hat, I knew it suited me perfectly. To this day, more than seven years later, the hat still encompasses my memories of a country as diverse in landscape and people as a 1000-piece puzzle, as well as the little island of Phi Phi that, unlike Koh Samui, was not spared from the wrath of the 2004 tsunami. It was, in fact, nearly completely destroyed, as far as news accounts go.

Our trip didn't end in Phi Phi. From there we went north to Kanchanaburi, a solemn town featuring the infamous railroad bridge over the River Kwai built by POWs held in Japanese camps during WWII. I crossed this bridge many times, each time looking down through the cracks between the railroad ties at the fast-moving river below and then quickening my pace to the other side. This town holds a cemetery of hundreds of white headstones set neatly in rows, each commemorating one soldier's life. It's an eerie resting place, so far from home for many of the people remembered there.

And that's the story of my writing hat. Whenever I put in on, I hear lilt of the islanders' words; I taste the pineapple, sweeter than candy, and feel its juice running down my chin; I smell the orchids in my hair, and I see a collage of images that waken memories long since fallen asleep.

It's a great hat.