Serendipity smiled, winked as well, and made me laugh earlier this week by bringing one of my favorite Thanksgiving memories to mind.
To begin, my two-weeks-shy-of-three-year-old granddaughter told me, with a grin and a giggle, all about “Pete The Blue Cat” who is a character in one of her books. It is actually from the award-winning “Pete the Cat” series by James and Kimberly Dean, but dear Maya calls him “Pete The Blue Cat” for obvious reasons.
I, in turn, shared with Maya a story about my grandparents’ cat, Pete, an orangey-blonde tabby who I obviously renamed “Pete The Orange Cat” in my retelling.
Before proceeding with that tale, let me share some further literary serendipity. The very day before Maya’s conversation about “Pete The Blue Cat,” I had read her a new book via video chat, as I often do, since she lives in the Bay Area.
Titled “I Want My Hat Back” by Jon Klassen, it won the Theodore Seuss Geisel Honor and is about a bear who, as you can guess, has lost his cap. Throughout the pages he asks a series of animals he encounters, “Have you seen my hat?”
The fox, frog, rabbit, turtle, snake and armadillo are of no help and eventually the bear laments: “Nobody has seen my hat. What if I never see it again? What if nobody ever finds it? My poor hat. I miss it so much.”
At long last, a deer asks the bear what his hat looks like.
“It is red and pointy and…” the bear answers.
Which brings me back to my Thanksgiving memory. We had enjoyed a full feast, complete with a variety of at least six home-baked pies because my Grandma Mabel loved to make everyone’s favorite, and were getting ready for the 45-mile drive home.
“I can’t find my hat,” six-year-old me announced with emergency in my voice.
I asked everyone – my two older brothers, younger sister, mom and dad, Mabel and Grandpa Ansel – if they had seen my hat, but no one had. No one needed to ask what my hat looked like because I wore the Davy Crockett coonskin cap, complete with ringed tail, everywhere except in the shower.
A search party was organized and the entire family looked low and high, upstairs and downstairs, with no luck. Pop, anxious to get on the road before the holiday traffic, and Ohio’s winter weather, got too bad, finally said we had to go.
Nobody has seen my hat, I surely sniveled. What if I never see it again? What if nobody ever finds it?
Grandpa soothed my woes by promising he would keep looking until he found it and would bring it when he and Mable came to our house for Christmas dinner. Trailing the rest of my family like a sad little caboose, I trudged towards the front door.
My poor hat. I miss it so much.
Suddenly, Mabel sang out excitedly, “Here it is! I found it!” She had spotted the tip of the tail of my coonskin cap poking out from beneath the dining room table’s formal tablecloth that draped all the way to the floor.
Mabel reached down to retrieve the Davy Crockett hat and . . .
. . . MEOWWW-HOWWWL!
She had yanked Pete The Orange Cat’s striped tail!
My pouty lower lip instantly gave way to laughter.
I won’t spoil the ending of the book “I Want My Hat Back” for you, but my tale of that long-ago Thanksgiving evening concluded with all of us giving belated thanks we weren’t Pete The Sore-Tailed Cat.
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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn. His SIGNED books are available at www.WoodyWoodburn.com.
Personalized Signed copies of WOODEN & ME: Life Lessons from My Two-Decade Friendship with the Legendary Coach and Humanitarian to Help “Make Each Day Your Masterpiece” and “Strawberries in Wintertime: Essays on Life, Love, and Laughter” are available at WoodyWoodburn.com