The Story of M’s Sombrero

Neil Matkin © 2009

I am sending you an item of some significance and, interestingly enough, the story that goes with it is one that has served many well over time. I know it will serve you well also and, as unlikely as you may be to believe you will do what is prescribed, everyone I have shared this story with ultimately takes it to heart and passes the story on to their friends and loved ones as opportunity calls for it. By the time this letter reaches you, the item will likely be in your hands – or hopefully, on your head!

But, back to the story. I share this story because what I am sending you is going to help you to get better sooner than you would otherwise and, as I know it works, I feel obliged to share my own experience.

In January 1997, I had the distinct privilege of arriving for work at the Illinois Board of Higher Education. A doctoral student just finishing my course work, I was intent upon completing my studies. I was hired with the understanding that I would continue and complete the educational objectives I had begun and I was committed to do the same. But the story is a bit more complex than initial expectations or even my best intentions.

You see, the college president for whom I worked in my employment prior to arriving in the Land of Lincoln was, in fact, an exceptionally “fine human being[1].” In order to release me from my contract, allowing me to take the job in Illinois, he had insisted that I continue to return to the college on weekends to teach out my contract. While somewhat lucrative to me financially, it added a great burden that was nearly unbearable. I did not want to do it given the other items I was faced with but I was committed to leaving the organization honorably after 16 years of service and reluctantly agreed. I was also deeply committed to my students and wanted to be there for them. As a result, my first five months in Illinois were filled with learning the expectations of a new job and flying home on the weekends to fulfill the contractual obligations of the old job and the last course requirements for my doctoral work.

There were two final classes that I had to take on Saturdays at Texas A & M to wrap up my coursework. One of them was a graduate course in advanced statistics and that alone would have been enough to make my life exceedingly difficult. My schedule was Monday-Friday at the IBHE, leave for St. Louis at 4 a.m. on Saturday mornings, fly from St. Louis to Dallas, rent a car, arrive at the university by 10 a.m. for my advanced statistics course, followed by the required dissertation proposal class at 1 p.m. At 4 o’clock, and nearing complete exhaustion, I would head the 75 miles to Hawkins, Texas, where I would get to spend the afternoon and evening with my wife and three sons – then just little boys aged 9, 7, and 5 and by mid-May, ages 10, 8, and 6. At 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday I was at my former college teaching the capstone course for the information technology majors and one other course that now eludes me. The students had voted and agreed to take their courses on Sunday morning rather than Saturday afternoon and for that, I remain most appreciative and grateful. Most weeks, I would head back to the airport Sunday evening and, on one or two occasions, I worked it out with my supervisor to fly in Monday morning and report by noon when the schedule would allow. Hawkins is a solid two-and-a-half hours from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport though so it made for a tough hall no matter when I left. It was a grueling five and a half months that I hope to never repeat in this life time or any other. But there was another factor to this already strenuous routine that pressurized it to the point of occasional despair.

Throughout this ordeal, my dissertation committee chair gently insisted that I sit for the three days of written comprehensive exams and four hour oral comps to follow in March and April, respectively, of this same semester. It was the tradition at Texas A & M – Commerce and they were trying to improve their completion record for doctoral students. As a result, my apartment at Lincoln Towers in Springfield, Illinois was a haphazard yet well-organized collection of paper, textbooks, journal articles, and notes covering every flat surface save the side of the bed where I slept. It was with this backdrop that the executive director of the Board of Higher Education did something truly wonderful. Rather than requiring me to take a two-week leave of absence to prepare and sit for the three days of written comps (since I had yet to build up sufficient vacation time), Dr. Wagner offered me two weeks of his own vacation time to help me succeed and avoid a significant financial loss. I have never forgotten that act of charity for someone he barely knew, and I have thought of it often over the years as I have tried to ease the burden of new employees when possible. It has actively influenced my generosity to others and, as virtually all sincere acts of giving do, it has paid handsome dividends along the way in terms of mental well-being.

To continue the story, I took the week prior to my written comps to prepare myself and focus intently on all of the class notes and related readings from the previous three years of graduate study. The time came for the exams and I had to provide a computer the day prior to the start of exams. The computer could have only the operating system and a word processor. It had to be certified by an IT person that it contained no notes of any kind. The machine was placed in a conference room along with the three others provided by the other three doctoral students who would be writing at the same time. After it was in place on Monday afternoon of that fateful week, I wasn’t allowed further access to it until the following morning at 8 a.m. when writing was to begin.

I elected to stay in dormitories located on the campus for $14 per night. The accommodations were exceedingly sparse but clean and they were within easy access to the education building where I would be testing. The next morning, I started with a hearty breakfast and then, at 7:45 a.m., checked in with Louise Birdwell, a truly delightful and encouraging woman who served as department secretary. I was allowed access to the room promptly at 8 a.m. The first set of questions was delivered immediately after and I began writing with a one-hour break for lunch and a stop time of 5 p.m. I had to print out the work from the morning questions before lunch and the same with the afternoon’s questions before five o’clock and turn them in after which the IT check took place to ensure that all was erased from the computer.   The questions were delivered in a sealed envelope and each of us had ripped into the questions and got to work quickly with signs of stress either increasing or leaving our faces as we read the questions in our hands. I remember quickly outlining all that I could recall on the particular subject on a yellow pad of paper and, as new thoughts came to mind, I added them as well. I wrote and wrote, edited and rewrote, and finally, with fifteen minutes until noon, printed out my first submission. So went the afternoon, the next morning, and the following afternoon. Well, almost.

At around 4 p.m. on the second day, Dr. Jim Tunnel, my gruff but lovable committee chair, appeared at the door of the conference room and ushered me quietly into the hallway.

“Hello Dr. Tunnel,” I said. No greeting was offered in return.

“Who did you have for Higher Education Policy?” he asked bruskly, as was his way. He was friendly but direct and always seemed like he was about to dash off mid-sentence which, on occasion, he did.

“Dr. Linda Timmerman,” I replied. Although quite good, Dr. Timmerman had been a substitute for whomever I should have had in Tunnel’s view I would come to realize as events unfolded.

“Thought so,” he said. “Get a piece of paper and take this down,” he barked.

I went back into the conference room and grabbed my yellow pad. Returning to the hallway trying to close the door as quietly as I could so as not to disturb the others, I quickly wrote down the name of the author and dissertation title he provided. His last comment in this very brief conversation was that I should spend some time with these new materials to prepare for the third day of writing. With that wonderful tidbit of wisdom, Dr. Tunnel departed down the hall without further comment and he did not look back to see what a wreck I had become upon receiving this news. My head was swimming and I literally felt myself tense up. I thought that this would have been great information a month earlier and I wondered about possible Machiavellian motives for this last minute delivery, however, that was never Dr. Tunnel’s style.

I didn’t have time to dawdle as I still had the afternoon’s writing to wrap up, print, and turn in. I put aside the growing panic that I felt over this new turn of events and, with some difficulty, refocused myself to the task at hand. At just a minute or two before five, I was able to turn in the afternoon’s work successfully. After my computer was inspected, to ensure that I had saved nothing of my work, I was released for the evening.

Typically, I would eat supper and take a leisurely stroll around the campus and try to wind down from the day before spending 2-3 hours with my notes in the evening. That was not to be my routine this evening. My stomach was churning from the stress of the last two days and this was layered on the stress of the last two months which was piled atop the stress of the unknown task now before me. I was consciously trying to control my breathing and fight off the unexpected and unusual beginning waves of nausea. I headed straight to the third floor of the library intent on the mission to find the required dissertation.

When I finally found it my heart simply sank. It was quite a hefty and foreboding volume. I found a library table off to the side of the floor and turned to the fifth chapter to read the findings of the study. I would like to say that the dissertation on educational policy was a good read but, in the abstract, I found it challenging to find a rhythm with which I could grow comfortable in my reading. Even though I was a policy wonk in the making, the material seemed distant and difficult to grasp. Now, I periodically had unexplainable, but thankfully brief, waves of panic and hints of nausea wash over me. In addition, there was a soundtrack in the making with audible stomach rumblings. I was feeling clammy and my heart was racing. It was like I was experiencing the intensity of “a scene badly written in which I must play” (thinking of the Paul Simon lyric). The feeling of being trapped was becoming overwhelming, and I forced myself to take slow, deep breaths again to try and focus. I had never had an experience like this in my life and have yet to have anything like it since.

Chapter five was useless for my purposes and I started drudging through the literature review in chapter two. The dissertation was a compendium of various educational policy theories and practices with pages upon pages of refereed journal folderol for each one in earlier chapters. Taking notes as I went through, I opted to write my notes out long hand to perhaps cement some of the facts into my weary mind and avoid the expense and time of copying the dissertation. I finally got into a rhythm and began to feel somewhat calmer. Time passed quickly beyond my awareness and suddenly it was 11 p.m. and the library was closing. How could that be? I had taken only one five or six minute break the whole evening when finding a restroom had become my new number one priority. I was not even halfway finished with the literature review. Knowing that the reference librarians who knew me were long gone and that the students and part-timers staffing the desk at this late hour would never let me remove the reference book from the library, I made the decision to bundle it in my bag and take it with me. An ethical lapse perhaps but not one I’ve ever regretted.

And so one of the worst nights of my life had begun. On the way to the dorm, I went to the 7-11 across from campus as all of the fast food joints, local cafeterias, and campus eateries had already shuttered on that Wednesday evening. I remember odd little things from the trek into the convenience store. I remember the washtub full of ice and beer at the front of the store waiting for some unknown late shift to arrive and Farah Fawcett was staring at me over the wooden privacy cover on the magazine rack that kept young’uns from seeing more than they should. I selected a variety of cheese and crackers packages (a reminder of “Wagner-isms” I had already started to enjoy back in Illinois – Dr. Wagner, instead of cursing, would often say, “Well cheese and crackers!”). Then I selected other even less nutritious fare to get me through the evening along with four or five rolls of Tums. I didn’t know it at the time but I wouldn’t end up eating any of it save the Tums. Arriving back to the $14 a night luxury cinder block dormitory, where it appeared I was the lone guest, I set out to return to my studies. My stomach was still churning and I still had waves of nausea. I sucked the anti-acids down like candy as I studied hoping against hope that they would soothe the gastrointestinal war that was now threatening to pit my body full tilt against me.

It was sometime after midnight when I realized I was experiencing my first and only ever full-blown panic attack. I didn’t know what to do, but I felt embarrassed and was not sure I could muster the discipline and strength to continue studying at all. Helplessness and a feeling of intense dread and unreasonable despair just seemed to swallow me whole. I felt the need to reach out but to whom at this crazy hour? What would I tell them? I didn’t want to panic Janyth as I knew she would be asleep by now and it was so late. I had called her for a couple of minutes from the payphone in the library earlier and all I wanted to do was get in the truck and drive home to Hawkins, TX and slide into bed next to her knowing that it would bring immediate comfort. Could I drive? Could I go 150 miles round trip and still get back for the third day of writing? I wanted to badly but I just couldn’t chance it.

The dorm room was dimly lit by the single desk lamp and, as I lay curled up in a ball on the bed, I was desperately trying to clear my head. I felt the need to either crawl under the bed and hide or somehow blend in with the beige paint of the wall and just fade from view but I couldn’t make myself move. I was still trying to think who, if anyone, might be able to help me somehow. Finally, I decided that I would call my dad’s first cousin, Murline Matkin, a rather distant cousin with whom I had been corresponding mostly by e-mail and that without any regularity. She was a practicing psychiatrist in the Cleveland, Ohio area and was one of my dad’s favorite people in the world. She was the only other Matkin of any generation to have obtained the level of education I was attempting and she succeeded masterfully at Case Western Reserve University. Her early research on components of what later became the Meiers-Brigg Personality Inventory are still relevant and widely in use around the world. I remembered her writing in an earlier e-mail exchange that on some days she didn’t want to get out of bed for a week or longer. I knew that she would be the most likely to understand my current state of mind but, best of all, M was an extreme night owl. I knew she would be up but I was not sure she would answer as her mood largely determined whether the phone was a tolerable interruption or not.

Murline was peculiar in many ways too numerous to list here with some traits quite engaging and others less pleasant as are many of our personal peccadillos. On our few phone calls, she was prone to hanging up whenever she was finished with the conversation! That happened only a few times but without a lot of warning. After the unexpected death of her best friend and husband some years before, she was not always herself and I had realized some time before that she missed him terribly and struggled as a result. Melancholy moods and reflections were not uncommon and oft M put her free flowing thoughts into long e-mails that I treasured for their pearls of wisdom as well as their unguarded sincerity. Overly fond of good wine and engaged in her own battles with deep and chronic depression – which she would call the blue dog – she might simply choose not to answer. But, after laying in the room for what seemed like forever, I found the will to force myself to look up her number in my address book, make my way to stand, walk slowly and deliberately to the pay phone in the hall, and input my phone card code into the payphone, and I called her nonetheless pleased that what seemed to be a Herculean effort resulted in a strong ring tone in my ear.

To my relief, even though the hour was ridiculous, Murline picked up on the very first ring. She was surprised to hear from me and, without a great deal of build up, I talked with her and told her where I was and what I was doing and how I was feeling. I just let it pour out of me and I was fighting back tears of both anger and embarrassment and still feeling the burden of stress beyond what I could even put into words. She listened quietly but then responded quickly. Her surprise at my call and the hour gave way to the sharp focus and her brilliant preciseness and insight that I loved about her. She spoke with authority and compassion but she was now clearly on a mission.

In a commanding tone M quickly spit out, “Sweeters, you need a sun hat. Do you have a sun hat or a sombrero with you? You must have a sombrero with you, since you’ve been living down there in the heat of Hell, Texas.” Murline had grown up near Center, Texas and later outside of Houston. For reasons I never fully understood, she hated Texas and never wanted to come back and missed no opportunity to make her perspective on the matter known. She always referred to any part and the whole of Texas as Hell, Texas and rarely if ever was the name of the state uttered without the word hell in paper-thin close proximity. She considered our move to Illinois to be a sign of growing intelligence in the Matkin gene pool and said so with delight in earlier conversations referring to the North in general as “the civilized part of the United States.”

Now, it goes without saying that I wasn’t thrilled that M referred to me as “sweeters” but she did nonetheless and it grew on me over time albeit still with occasional resistance. M was not the kind of person you wasted valuable conversation time objecting to a nickname that had appeared out of thin air. She would have called me what she wanted whether I liked it or not so I had never protested just as I had never commented on the sudden endings of telephone conversations. It also goes without saying that I could scarcely believe my ears. A sombrero? Really? I feel like my head is about to explode and I’m probably dying and can’t catch my breath and barely made it to the freaking pay phone and I have to perform on my last day of writing and my dad’s crazy cousin the psychiatrist or psychologist or whatever she was is asking me about a damn hat?

My inner voice screamed at me asking, “Why had I bothered to call her at all?”

“Do I have a what?” I responded in utter defeat, still surprised by the question and too stressed to be indignant.

“Don’t be silly Sweeters,” M continued, now in a bit of a smiling, patronizing tone. “You either have a sombrero or you don’t,” she insisted. “You know what they are don’t you? You must own several down there in Hell, Texas. They’re the big straw hats for when you are working out in the garden or herding mules or whatever you do down there in that horrible place.”

I did know what a sombrero was, and I also knew it was distinctly different from the big straw hats one might wear when working out in the garden. I could not imagine that anyone actually herded mules but what did I know? I honestly felt like I had stepped into another dimension and would not have been at all surprised to see Rod Serling from the Twilight Zone step into the hallway. I told her that I certainly did not have a sun hat or a sombrero and I felt myself suddenly becoming very angry with her, which was not something I had ever experienced in any prior dealing with M. She was being so ridiculous and it wasn’t helping me at all. She wasn’t at all focused on my problems or even listening to me. Her immediate response to my answer caught me off guard once again. Flummoxed completely, defeated, deflated, and stinging from not being heard, I finally answered and told her that I did not have a sombrero. M wasted no time issuing her prescription.

“Well you are going to have to get one right now,” M insisted. “Is there a place where you can get one now? A 24-hour grocery store or an all night Wal-Mart perhaps? Surely you have those Wal-Marts down there in Hell, Texas!”

Now let me assure you, Commerce, Texas is a sleepy town that rolls up the sidewalks at sundown and the streets are empty long before midnight. At the time I was there it was the deadest college town I had ever seen. I wasn’t at all sure there was a 24-hour anything and even the one or two bars I knew about in the town closed by eleven o’clock to the best of my knowledge. I was incredulous and surprised at myself that I was even trying to respond to her line of questioning and her current command. Had it been anyone else other than her I know I would have just lost it and said horrible things that I would have regretted terribly afterwards.

But here I was, on the phone with my dad’s closest cousin from his youth, and I found myself fighting to maintain control of my tongue not to mention my stomach and my pounding head. It was infuriating though because I had called her for understanding, for compassion, for encouragement, and here she was babbling like a complete idiot about a damned sun hat or sombrero and Wal-Mart and Hell, Texas. They weren’t the same thing at all those two hats and she had to know it! I liked Texas and this whole phone call was just a very bad error in judgment at a very late hour on a day I was becoming convinced would likely be my last as panic was just a hair’s width away from consuming me completely once again.

Surprising me further, it appeared to me that I was silently arguing two sides of the issue at once in a high speed mental karate match so my resulting quiet and polite response surprised me immensely. “M, there’s a Wal-Mart in Sulphur Springs but it’s over 20 miles away,” I finally stammered, my defeat now nearing completion.

“You’d better hurry then Sweeters. Call me back as soon as you have the sombrero.”

And, with that, M simply hung up the phone. Click and she was gone. Just like that and that was just that and nothing more. With the receiver still to my ear I felt worse than I did when I called her. She must be drunk out of her mind. What was I going to do? Why had I called her in the first place? Stupid, stupid, stupid! Now I was angry and, out of frustration I hung up the phone so hard that the big, old, square, box-of-iron payphone shifted slightly on the wall. Then, like the idiot I had become or at worst affirmed myself to be, I hauled off and kicked the cinder block wall and it hurt like hell. I was just on the verge of completely losing my mind.

I limped back to the room, my foot now throbbing and, as I sat and pondered my situation briefly, I knew I needed to get back to studying but the ability to focus productively simply wasn’t within my grasp any longer if it had ever been in my control in the first place. I lay back quickly on the bed and hit my head hard on the cinder block wall of the dormitory and it hurt worse than my throbbing foot!   I cursed at least fifty foul words a in streak that would have made Tourette’s Syndrome history and pitched a small fit there in the privacy of the mostly unfurnished dorm room. I yelled profanities that had combined everything I had ever heard during my Navy years into a vitriolic intensity that surprised me totally and reached new personal heights never aimed or hoped for. I didn’t realize I had the capacity to be so upset but even that realization of some new personal extreme didn’t distract from my conniptions. I was truly beside myself and acting in a way that I could not rationally explain to myself then or in the years hence.

After a few minutes, I thought to stop the shallow panting that had become rhythmic and forced myself to breath more deeply as I now lay on the cold, hard tile floor and let the coolness seep into my body. Maybe the drive to Sulphur Springs would be a good diversion. After a while, I changed out of my gym shorts and into my jeans and pulled my sneakers on. With that, I set off down Highway 11 in my Ford Ranger to the Wal-Mart Super Center in Sulphur Springs. It was almost 23 miles from the dormitory to the Wal-Mart parking lot and there wasn’t so much as an inch that I traveled that I didn’t feel like a complete fool both for my breakdown and my new found cause of acquiring a hat.

One thing didn’t change though. I still didn’t feel any less panicked and I was struggling to keep control of my faculties. When I was but a few miles from my destination, I was greeted with a new development as I had begun sweating profusely. My vision became slightly blurred and I was having trouble seeing into the distance and this struck me as very strange as I always had excellent vision at a distance. Sweat was dripping into my eyes but it was more than that. What was wrong with me? My heart was pounding in my ears. What was wrong now? Something wasn’t right. My mind was racing, I was sweating, I felt nauseous, and now nervous and jittery. I had an unpleasant metallic taste in my mouth and I was sure I was going to die right there in the parking lot of Wally World. Somehow, I felt that would be a fitting end to this horrible night. Perhaps, from a sense of sublime irony, my family would put that on the tombstone: “Lost his mind, died at Wally World in search of a sombrero.”

Truly beginning to struggle, but now in an entirely different vein, I went into the Wal-Mart and found the payphone in the front entrance. Looking on my old Texas insurance card that was still in my wallet, I found the after hours number and dialed it. I had to write down a number that the answering service gave me but eventually connected to a nurse practitioner on call at the medical center that we had used in Tyler, Texas. I found out that I was having a reaction to all of the Tums I had eaten earlier. I had eaten three roles of Tums in a short time frame, eaten them like candy not even realizing I had eaten so many. I found out later that this reaction is sometimes called milk alkali syndrome but all I knew then was that I was not normal at the time and getting worse. The nurse told me to drink two to three quarts of water in the next four hours to flush my system. I had a fleeting thought that I would never, ever get through the third day of writing but I couldn’t make myself focus on that for anything longer than a flash of a second. I simply was on a downward spiral after two successful days and I could not see my way back. My ultimate journey of passing the written comps and completing the doctorate would be for nothing.

Having procured a gallon of bottled water, I walked slowly back to the truck. My head was spinning and my vision was still blurry. I had already started drinking the water but wasn’t feeling any better. My heart was racing. It was then that I remembered the sun hat – that stupid, stupid, double damnable, ridiculous sun hat. M had to be drunk out of her mind but, I was there and, even though it was now after 2 a.m., I turned around and went back into the Wal-Mart. I found the gardening department and located the straw hats. They were all garish and some had neck cords to keep them from falling off of the head or to let them hang from the neck on one’s back. I hated them all, and I was furious that I was even looking at them at all. My head was pounding, as was my heart. I was just not at all well and the last thing on Earth I should be doing is looking at sun hats in Wal-mart.

Eventually though, not wanting to return to my truck empty handed, I picked out one and paid for it. I got back in the truck and drank another huge swig of water. The trip back to Commerce was a long one, and I don’t think I ever went over 45 miles per hour even though I was on a road with a 70 mph limit. When I finally got back to the dormitory it was around 3:35 a.m. I went straight to the payphone and called M and I decided that, if she answered, I would not tell her about the Tums poisoning. I was tempted though to tell her fully how stupid it was to go and buy a hat in the middle of the night and how much I didn’t appreciate her not listening to me and trying to help me when she of all people should have been helpful. Once again, to my surprise, she answered on the first ring and I realized she had been waiting for my call.

“Do you have the sun hat, Sweeters?” she asked immediately.

“Yes ma’am, I do,” I responded not able to keep a tone of severe agitation and sarcasm out of my voice this time. I was utterly exhausted and still somewhat annoyed and I just couldn’t hide it any longer. To my relief, my vision did seem to be returning back to normal somewhat and the water must be kicking in and helping a bit.

“Now listen Sweeters,” M said. “You go to bed and set your alarm for 5:30. She digressed momentarily and focused on her life long hatred of alarm clocks which I found to be maddening. Segueing back to “instruction mode,” M said, “Get up and spend one more hour studying and then get cleaned up and go to breakfast. Eat a big breakfast!” She quickly added that she hated breakfast and couldn’t imagine a worse time for a meal. Then she said, “Eat first, then study. And, Sweeters, when you go to write this morning, you have to wear the sun hat.” My senses sharpened and my mind immediately focused into a strong response and I told her in no uncertain terms that it would be a cold day in hell (I could silently imagine her adding “Texas”) before I would wear this stupid-ass hat while taking my doctoral comps with three other doctoral students in the room and people in the hall and satellites in space that see all anyway.

“M, I’m not wearing the hat while I write. There are people all over the education building who know me. There are three other people in the conference room writing their comps at the same time. It’s too embarrassing and I won’t do it.”

“Sweeters, if you don’t wear the hat, how will I beam you my energy and help you through this? You have to wear the hat or my energy won’t find you the way it should. Now, please promise me you’ll wear the hat.”

It dawned on me that I had never heard her use the word ‘please.’ “Murline, I’m just not sure I can do it…”

“Sweeters,” she interrupted quickly, “you wear the hat or you won’t get through this. Ok? And Sweeters, make sure and take the book back to the library when you finish.  You know you can’t take reference materials from the library, you do know that, don’t you? So call me when you get your notice that you passed your written comps. Make sure and wear the sombrero, Sweeters! I will be up and beaming energy to that sombrero starting at eight when you start writing and I won’t stop until you are finished for the day,” she said quickly and then she hung up the phone before I could offer another objection or any response at all. M had left the building, so to speak!

And there I was…left holding the phone at nearly 4 a.m. in the stark, beige, cinder block hallway. After all I had been through, my final exchange with M had lasted just seven or eight minutes and I was now the proud owner of a big sun hat.

I walked, still limping from my earlier encounter with the cinder block wall, down the hallway back to the dorm room. I had finished about half a gallon of water and my vision was really much better now and felt almost normal. I set my travel alarm for 5:45 a.m. and went to bed. When the alarm went off I went down the hall and quickly showered and got dressed and packed up my clothes and toiletries. I was about to load everything into the truck when I had a pang of conscience and I limped back to straighten the slightly cockeyed payphone. After I took care of that last shred of evidence to my crazy night, I made my way over to the campus restaurant that was in the old Sam Rayburn building, now long since demolished and replaced with newer, more modern buildings with none of the appeal of the original.

I went in, ordered breakfast, and sat in the dining area and read through the dissertation while I drank coffee and ate. I kept glancing about me sure someone would recognize that I had purloined the big volume from the library but the mattress police were simply not vigilant about such things at this time of the morning and I escaped unnoticed. I was feeling much better but still did not feel that I had mastered the material. At 7:15, I folded up my tent and headed to the education building across the large parking lot from the restaurant. I sat on one of the benches in the breezeway and went through all of my notes quickly once more. My head was spinning from exhaustion, the trauma of the night, from the stress of the last two months and the last two days, and from all of the information floating about in my head without hope of form or order. The sun hat was on the bench next to me mocking me quietly.

To this day I cannot explain my panic or why I called my psychiatrist first cousin once removed in the middle of the night. At that time, I was barely acquainted with her throughout my thirty-seven years on the earth. I had seen her at her mother’s funeral, my great aunt Gladys, four or five years earlier and before that I was fourteen or fifteen years old and barely recalled her voice or face. I also cannot explain what compelled me to bring that ridiculous sun hat into the conference room and, after the day’s packet of questions was delivered, I put on the hat, adjusted it on my head, and began to work amidst snickers, grins, and giggles from the other doctoral students in the room. I didn’t acknowledge their stares or questions determined now to get through this ordeal with the little dignity I could muster by my silence.

I wore that silly hat the entire day and, as the day wore on, I made a conscious decision to like it realizing somehow the ridiculousness of it was somehow serving me quite well. As my mind raced trying to organize literally years of information, my thoughts betrayed me and I had to stop and laugh quietly to myself on several occasions. I was not yet accustomed to being intentionally ridiculous but, as time would prove, it was something that would grow on me over the years. But most importantly, I was not panicked any longer and the laughter over the stupid hat on my head and the lunacy of it all seemed to calm me somehow. I was once again in control of my faculties, able to subdue the panic that I had felt, and worked furiously and competently to complete the task at hand. The occasional grumble from my stomach let me know that I wasn’t far from the cliff’s edge but neither was I hanging on for dear life any longer either. It was coming together and I was grateful beyond my ability to express.

The day passed quickly and I wore that silly hat throughout the entire ordeal save for a forty-five minute lunch period when I figured M needed a break from energy beaming. Surely she would know to break for lunch despite the one-hour time zone difference, right? I kept the hat for many years afterwards as a reminder of my ordeal and eventually, amidst several moves or spring cleanings, I lost track of it and haven’t seen it now for many years. I never wore it again though other than occasionally placing it on my head in a passing moment of quiet nostalgia. M and I became regular e-mail pals and we chatted back and forth weekly for years to come until her untimely passing at sixty-nine years of age now over a decade ago. I never asked if she was actually beaming energy or not because coming to know her as I did, the asking of the question would have been an insult as she certainly was or had intended to at the very least or knew she could do so while sleeping. I came to love her dearly as much for her bizarre wisdom and blunt conversational style as her rambling semi-nonsensical sentences all connected with dots in her loosely constructed late night e-mails. The latter which I think may have been her way of counting glasses of wine consumed before, during, and after the typing had begun but even if so, in M resided a beautiful and caring soul and it was never far from the surface in her rambling communiqués.

In the years that have passed, I have given good friends and acquaintances sun hats and promised to help by beaming energy during their various challenges. I have seen a sixty-year-old college student pass her twice-failed college algebra class whilst wearing a truly ridiculous sun hat with a pink ribbon. I have seen a highly skilled technician ace one of the hardest certification tests in the industry with flying colors when he was certain of his failure. He wore an island floppy hat reminiscent of the one Bob Denver wore on “Gilligan’s Island.”

When you wear the hat I have sent you – and you will certainly wear it sweeters – you can be assured that I will be beaming you my energy. You can also be assured that you will get through the panic that we all sometimes feel and that has come upon you during your recent woes. You will get through it because the gift of energy will reach you and strengthen you finding you when you need it most through the sun hat. I don’t understand why it works and I don’t care. But I do believe it and that’s enough for me. Later, when you are completely well, you will send me energy in my time of need – and a hat as well if necessary (I wear an extra large as I have a big old noggin).

So, dear friend, if M were alive she’d tell you to “Wear the hat, Sweeters! You have to wear the hat or my energy won’t reach you!”

A final note is that, of the four doctoral students writing doctoral comprehensive examinations over those three days, exactly one finished without requiring any rewrites, additional examination, or coursework.

That one wore M’s sombrero.

 

[1] Calling someone a “fine human being” was a habit the executive director at the Board of Higher Education employed to express his disdain for a particular person in a perfectly quotable, media-friendly manner.