Wherever She Lays Her Hat

So for as long as I can remember, Lyra has been tucking her hair into a baseball cap. For probably three or four years now. It's become part of her identity. She's not been that into cutting her hair off as she's realised that if her hair is short then she can't tie it back and she prefers to do that. The hat makes her look as if she has short hair anyway and therefore like a boy.

I think it's the main reason why she is mistaken for a boy. When she's wearing boys clothes with this hat on her head and what looks like short hair, there's nothing really to indicate that she's a girl, so I've never blamed people for getting it wrong.

Until recently, this baseball cap was everything to her. She wouldn't leave the house without it. If anybody not part of this family came into our home, then she would put it on. For the majority of time in the house she wore it anyway, but we insisted that she take it off at meal times, even though it was a struggle for us and also for her. She wore it to school and during playtimes although she wasn't allowed to wear it in class. She took it everywhere and wore it whenever she could.

We have been unable to part her from this hat. People would question me on why she felt the need to wear it. Even my mother went to the extreme of warning her that she would go bald if she carried on wearing it. We told her how sweaty and dirty it was. Heck, there were times when I was so frustrated that I would say it looked terrible, how it made her look weird. I used to hate that hat, especially when she wore it on sweltering hot days. It became a symbol for her complexity and something that reminded me daily that I didn't have a straight-forward little girl. That hat would give me knots in my stomach and a fear that things weren't as they should be. The hat became more than a hat - it became the struggle with this non-conformity that I had and I hated it. Hate for a hat! Can you imagine.

For her, I think it became almost like a mask she put on when she wanted to conceal the fact that she is a girl, although I suspected it had something to do with a confidence. It was a place to hide. Or maybe not a place to hide - I think I've got that wrong. It was perhaps the final prop she needed to make her feel who she truly is. The last piece of her identity puzzle.

Accepting Lyra for who she is, meant accepting the hat. If she needed it, then I would let her have it. After all, it was just a hat.

Once I had got over my stigma for the hat, a couple of things happened. One of the Cub leaders said she wasn't allowed to wear it any more at group. This was a toughy because Lyra goes to Cubs and feels 'one of the boys'. She protested, but I think because it had come from them and not me, she accepted it. Cubs is a place that she really feels part of, probably because some of the kids there think she is a boy. It was a big step for her.

Then, her school teacher said that she was no longer allowed it in the playground because it was associated with street wear. A common policy in schools, apparently.This riled me a bit because she had been wearing it for so long at school, I didn't understand why it had suddenly been decided that she was now not allowed it. But I took my lead from her, and she seemed fine about it - again because it had come from them and not me. It was funny because I'd been so anti-hat in the past, that now I'd come to terms with it as being part of her, the fact she wasn't allowed it any more saddened me somewhat. Yet she understood and was fine, so I had to go with that and not make an issue of it. Make an issue out of something that used to be an issue for me. Strange, eh?

Over the past few weeks, Lyra has hardly worn the hat. I think it's part of the changes that I wrote about in my last blog. In fact we went to London for the day and she didn't even take it in the car with her. It was the first time she'd properly been out in public without it and it was great because it was her decision, not something that had been forced upon her.

All I can say now is that this little girl must be growing so comfortable in her own skin that she doesn't need any props. She has a self-belief that now doesn't need a hat.

And hey, wherever she decides to lay that hat, well that's my girl.