For a good many years now, at the urging/request of my grandmother, my mom’s side of the family has created personalized calendars that are given out at Christmas. In addition to the usual calendar fare, Shutterfly allows us to place photos on any dates we’d like, meaning that each family member’s face triumphantly appears on his or her birthday.

While I’ve always enjoyed the calendar, Ella and Annie took a particular shine to it this year, delighting in each person’s photo and commenting on which months receive the heaviest birthday traffic. (I printed off photos for the members of Nick’s family, too, and stuck them on the corresponding squares; June, December, and January are particularly heavily-birthdayed months.)

They were particularly smitten with the weeks when several people have birthdays in a row (and the coincidental dates when people actually share birthdays, something you’d think wouldn’t happen all that often in a relatively small family because there are 365 days on which to have been born), with these last two weeks in January being the first of the clusters.

“Mom – Alex’s (their cousin) birthday was Tuesday, Grandma’s birthday was yesterday, and Lisa’s (my aunt) and Adam’s (my cousin) birthdays are next week! That’s crazy!”

It is! But it’s actually even crazier.

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My grandfather loved hats. He would have laughed mischievously at the thought of me calling him a connoisseur of hats – that’s a bit of a stretch – but he certainly enjoyed them. Baseball caps, cowboy hats, visors, woven ones with wide floppy brims, straw hats, light-up headpieces with glowing lettering across the front… you name it, he had one.

Ever true to his creative, do-it-yourself-but-kind-of-on-the-cheap nature, he had nailed flat pieces of wood to the dining room walls at the lake, on top of which he’d attached clothespins – each of which held a member of the hat collection. Although this newfangled storage system appeared in the later years of his life, the hats themselves were around for much longer. I remember playing with them as a little girl, fascinated with their feel on my head and the way they smelled like him. (Not an Old Spice kind of smell – more musty and fisherman-y and turpentine-y — but grandpa through and through.)

Summer 1977; one of my all-time favorite photos of anything, ever.
Would that every child could be looked at by their grandparent like this.

In the summers before the old lake house was razed and the new one was constructed – the last two summers of my grandfather’s life – Ella and Annie, too, became unofficial members of Great‘s Hat Club. It gave me such a kick to see them wearing his caps and seeing them all enjoy one another’s company so much. I only wish that they remembered it – remembered him – as clearly as I do.

 Ella, at the same age I was in the above photo, wearing one of Great’s hats.
His avant-garde hat holder is clearly visible in the background…

Annie – seven months – with my aunt Lisa, joining in on the hat convention.

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While sorting through things in the basement (let us all share a moment of silence for this miraculous occasion, shall we….?), I came across the hat my grandfather had worn when he was in the Navy. He didn’t talk with me much about his days in the service – then again, I hadn’t really asked (something I regret deeply now) – so I don’t really have much of a frame of reference for this regal topper, but it makes me smile each time I see it, imagining bygone days when my grandfather piloted planes that scanned the ocean for German U-boats, when he and my grandmother exchanged letters and television hadn’t been invented. Plus, all these years and miles later, that hat still smells like my grandpa.

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See, it wasn’t just Grandma and her sister who have birthdays in January – Great did, too.

“He did? I can’t believe it!”

Yep. HIs birthday was today, actually. January 22nd, 1921.

“So how old would he be?”

I see that you don’t get along so well with The Math either.

“What?”

Never mind. He would have turned 94 today.

“We should put his picture on the calendar!”

Long before Photoshop became popular, my grandfather loved toying with photos on his computer, swapping family faces and chuckling at his exploits. As soon as I get the chance, I’m definitely going to print out his photo and put it on the calendar. It’s kind of creepy… but Great would totally have approved.