The Hat Was Full Price

Beth Kephart

Word Count 165

The dress itself was discounted. I hadn’t earned full price, my mother said. (Not marrying a doctor. Not marrying a lawyer. Marrying, instead, an artist. Marrying uncertainty and another culture.) There, in the back of the fancy shop, it hung, the place where ill-fitting dresses went to die.
My act of defiance was to ask for a hat which was bigger than a veil and therefore more impressive and, most materially, not discounted. A starchy, stiffy, ill-fitting hat that tipped skyward until I’d yank it floorward—through the stroboscopic picture taking, through the runnels of rain on the way to the church, through the wait, just wait, you can still turn back hiatus at the end of the aisle on my father’s arm until the music marched us forward.
What kind of defiance yields such a wedding-day hat? A hat that squats? A hat that mocks? A hat I yanked and yanked and finally tossed, but I did not toss the marriage.

Beth is the award-winning author of three-dozen books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, co-founder of Juncture Workshops, and a widely published essayist.