Kid Prometheus
It’s a Franchise ’47 Sox cap, bought around 10 years ago; cotton, not wool. Low-slung, a casual fan’s baseball hat, the navy fading over time due to the sun. Comes in S, M, L, or XL, not fitted. This one is M.
A utilitarian cap, but one I got sick of because it became so weathered and grungy after just a few years of wear. It was designed to eventually look like some frat bro’s totem. No. That’s not me, not anymore, anyway. So within the past few years I bought a legit Sox field model 59/Fifty and a stretch-fit 39/Thirty (I have a baseball cap problem, I’m aware of this). Navy synthetics, structured. Sharp. Adult. I tossed the old Franchise cap into my two boys’ room like a steak into the lion’s den, knowing it would eventually find its rightful home as a crown atop the worthiest child. And that was the last I saw of it for a long, long while.
Within the past few days it’s resurfaced on my 13-year old daughter’s head, surprisingly. The journey it took to get there is one that interests me, but not so much so that I’d kill whatever bond she’s developed with it by dissecting it so coldly. Lord knows if I call attention to the fact that she’s wearing it at all, it will ensure it doesn’t happen again.
So instead I look at her hunched over her laptop as she does her homework, old Sox cap pulled down purposefully just above her brow, the visor’s curve lit faintly by the screen’s glow. Her freckled nose visible just beneath, her pursed lips set as she plows through her studies. Ever the straight-A student.
She likes baseball in the way that people like air: hey, it’s great, but do you ever really think about it? So I’m not really pondering the intensity she may or may not feel for the Red Sox. I’m thinking instead about how she’s wearing the hat because she wants to, because it serves a purpose for which I likely don’t understand, and how maybe it will become something meaningful to her over the next few years and beyond.
My daughter, the resurrector, with so many blank pages awaiting her life’s words.
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