Witch Hat

When I was a little girl, I liked playing in my mother’s closet.  My mother had a large closet full of dresses and coats and shoes, but, I don’t exactly remember why I liked playing in there, other than the fact that I’m pretty sure it had to do a lot with my mother’s pill box hat collection that she kept on the very top shelf of her closet.  They were old hats that my mother wore when my older siblings were babies, and they were what she called her “Jackie O” hats.  I never saw her wear them, and I was fascinated by them.  I would often climb on chairs or stools just to try and reach for them.  Sometimes I would throw one of her fancy heels at one of them, and they would eventually fall down one by one from off the shelf.   I would put the hats on my head, put on my mother’s heels, and walk around the house in them until she noticed.  Of course, she would eventually notice the mess in the closet before she saw me come around the corner, and I was often scolded and told not to go in her closet again, but of course, it didn’t stop me from playing in her closets…

 

UNTIL ONE DAY….. 

 

On one particular day, when her closet doors were open, I looked high up in her closet and was surprised to see something I had never seen before.  Right next to her pink, feathered pill box hat, on the top shelf, was a pointed, black, Halloween witch hat!  Of course, it was obvious that the hat was made of paper, with orange and green fringes, and it looked a lot like the hat my sister wore that Halloween, and it couldn’t possibly belong to my mother, BUT the image of that hat in my mother’s closet haunted me for days, maybe even weeks. 

 

That is when I started having dreams that my mother was a witch.  Of course, the witch wasn’t my REAL mother; my mother was transformed to an evil witch when she put on the hat.  The only time she wore the hat was at night when she was busy in her sewing room, which happened to be upstairs, right next to my bedroom.  As I lay there in my twin bed, I would slowly pull the covers over my head, as I listened to the hum of the sewing machine in the next room.  The humming would keep me up late, but I would eventually fall asleep, and have another dream.  In the dream, my mother was now transformed to a witch, busily sewing away on her sewing machine of evil, as she made more and more black witch hats.  She would then jump on a broom and laugh as she flew through the windows of my room.  I would wake up from these dreams in the middle of the night, and run to the top of the stairs, where I would continually scream until I was rescued by my father and my REAL mother, who had since been transformed back to her normal pink feathered pill box hat self.  

 

After numerous dreams, I finally confided to my sister of what I had seen in our mother’s closet, and of course she ran off and told her that I thought she was a witch.  This did not sit well with my mother, but the witch hat was quickly removed from her closet and into the trash, and it wasn’t until then until the witch nightmares ended.