Oma, Red Hats, a Book Club, Sharing and a Poem

I failed to mention in my previous Red Hat Society post that it was my dear friend, Oma, who took me to that first meeting. Now, Oma happens to be a very fun-loving, adventurous kind of girl, so when I accepted her invitation to spend Saturday the 26th of January with her I knew (without being sure of exactly what we’d be doing ) that we’d have a good time. Oma had a few ideas of how we could spend the day. They were: Attend the Catholic Women’s Conference. Go to a meeting of a book club which is made up of a few members of her church (which would require that we quickly read A Faith For Grown-Ups by Robert Lockwood, the book club’s selection of the month).  Or hang out with the Red Hat ladies. All the ideas sounded good to me, so I asked Oma to decide. And she came up with the perfect plan; we would attend the book club meeting that morning, then quickly drive across town to meet the Red Hat girls. We had to miss a little bit of each meetings that way, but it was well worth it! I met some very nice people, am on my way to becoming a pink hat lady and I finally found a book discussion group, which is something I’ve been looking for for quite a while!   In her last e-mail to me Oma made the comment that, “Things are better shared.”  And she is so right!  Adventures and books, tears and laughter, good food, great ideas, hard work and deep thoughts are all better shared. Thank you, Oma, for sharing so much with with me.

Because I’m a bit of a geek, I did a little reading on the Red Hat Society before my outing with my friend last Saturday. I was going to tell you, in my own words, what I learned about the club’s origin but, after a few false starts, I decided to just copy and paste the story from the Red Hat Society’s website. So here ya go!

While visiting a friend in Tucson several years ago, Sue Ellen impulsively bought a bright red fedora at a thrift shop, for no other reason than that it was cheap and, she thought, quite dashing. A year or two later she read the poem “Warning” by Jenny Joseph, which depicts an older woman in purple clothing with a red hat. Sue Ellen felt an immediate kinship with Ms. Joseph. She decided that her birthday gift to her dear friend, Linda Murphy, would be a vintage red hat and a copy of the poem. She has always enjoyed whimsical decorating ideas, so she thought the hat would look nice hanging on a hook next to the framed poem. Linda got so much enjoyment out of the hat and the poem that Sue Ellen gave the same gift to another friend, then another, then another.

One day it occurred to these friends that they were becoming a sort of “Red Hat Society” and that perhaps they should go out to tea… in full regalia. They decided they would find purple dresses which didn’t go with their red hats to complete the poem’s image.

The tea was a smashing success.

Soon, each of them thought of another woman or two she wanted to include, and they bought more red hats. Their group swelled to 18, and they began to encourage other interested people to start their own chapters (18 women don’t fit well around a tea table). One of their members passed along the idea to a friend of hers in Florida, and their first “sibling” group was born.

Sue Ellen’s fondest hope is that these societies will proliferate far and wide. We have now held three successful Red Hat Society conventions — entire hotels filled with women of a certain age wearing red hats and purple outfits! Could world domination be far behind?

I told Oma this story (in my own words ) on our way to the meeting last week. She’s not as geeky as I am and hadn’t researched the club, you see. Anyway, she said she’d like to read the poem by Jenny Joseph and (even though she has her own computer and knows how to use the internet) I said I’d find it and send it to her. Well, to make a long story short, I didn’t follow through. ( I do have my image of Queen Procrastinator to uphold after-all! ) Anyway, I got an e-mail from Oma on Friday night saying that she’d been looking at my blog (she looks but never comments )  and asking if I’d mind posting the Jenny Joseph poem here. And posting the poem, my friends, is exactly what I’m going to do! Right now. Right here.

Warning by Jenny Joseph

When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat that doesn’t go and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only eat bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.

But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers

But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old and start to wear purple.

I think it would be fun to take Jenny’s poem and kind of “make it my own”, so to speak. You know, substitute the things she was looking forward to doing in her old age with the “old lady” things that I dream of doing one day. Perhaps you’ll see the results posted here in the not too distant future.