Family Friends and Hats

Aiden and Kaelyn are two of our pseudo grandkids. We've known them since Aiden, who will soon be 11, was a tiny baby. His sister Anika, who couldn't come today, was three at the time. Now she is in eighth grade. How time flies! We met them and their parents DJ and Rikki through my brother Steve and his then wife Susan. Susan and Rikki worked in the film industry and Steve and DJ were artists. We bonded immediately with the family and were delighted when Kaelyn came along six years ago. They live just across the border in Vancouver BC. They come down once and awhile to visit and pick up mail. There are less visits than there used to be now the kids are involved in school activities. And we don't go up to Vancouver often these days either. We really love their visits and a chance to catch up with all our lives.

Anyhow, today they came and we had a lovely time. I was talking to Kaelyn and showing her family pictures when she spied one of the hats in this picture. It is the bottom left one, a top hat that has a spring inside so that when you push on the top it closes into a flat circle. It belonged to my father's father who was a doctor who served in WWI. Everybody had to give the hat a try while I took photos.

Then I thought I'd show them the other two hats I have. The shiny top hat is a beaver skin top hat from London. It also belonged to my dad's father. The final hat, the round top one, I think it is called a Homburg, belonged to my dad. He wore it in 1951 when he and Mom went to Stockholm so he could receive the Nobel Prize in Chemistry (though he was actually a physicist.) One day we will donate this hat to the Smithsonian Institution to add to Dad's prize metals and the vest that he wore to Stockholm when he got the prize. That same vest was worn by several different UC Berkeley physicists who also got the Nobel Prize after Dad did. It has quite a history.

After playing with the hats, we all headed into the park for a walk. By then the kids were getting hungry. We walked home and the whole group headed off to Jalapeno's for a yummy Mexican lunch. Nice day indeed!