My Mother's Garden Party Hats

Every June, my mother hosts a garden party in her backyard and insists that every guest wear a hat. Not an ordinary hat. A ridiculous hat.

My father has worn a sombrero covered in plastic fruit. My nephew wore a traffic cone. My husband once wore a hat shaped like a lobster. My mother herself wears an enormous straw hat covered in silk flowers that she's been adding to for thirty years.

There's lemonade, tiny sandwiches, a croquet game nobody understands, and a prize for the best hat, judged by my mother, who is totally biased toward anyone who makes her laugh.

This year, my four-year-old daughter made her own hat out of a paper plate and twenty stickers. She won. She wore the crown all the way home and to preschool the next day.