My mother said to me around Christmas that she had noticed women wearing colorful versions of “that hat you got your dad” – the mad bomber hat. I don’t know where I got it. It was a long time ago. Now Quentin’s WWI aviator’s suede helmet I bought at the original Banana Republic, I didn’t buy it for him. He was little then, but later he found it. He likes it and wears it for the same reason: he tells people, “It’s warm.” Yes, it is. It is also a little odd looking, but then Quentin has the most marvelous smile and the hat takes on a renewed flair.

But I was talking about the Mad Bomber hat, the one I gave my dad. It was sort of a joking Christmas present because when I was in high school, he used to drive me crazy by sticking the zipped-off hood of a parka coat on his head to putter around outside or walk the dog. The sideflaps poked out down around chin level like beagle ears. Overall, it gave him the look of a homeless man. It was some shade of green; I can’t really call it forth clearly in my mind’s eye because I always rolled my eyes when I looked out the window and saw him wearing it.

When I saw the Mad Bomber hat years later, I knew I had to get it for him. That Christmas morning, I remember my mother telling my aunt about the infamous hood and remarking, “She hated it, just hated it.” He wore the Mad Bomber and I think it kept him warm, and that I had learned, was the important thing.

Then these stylish versions turned up at Eddie Bauer and Mother took a fancy to them, so I got her one for a late Christmas present – although she insisted on paying for it. I got her, though, I told her it was half as much as it was. Hers is blue with the fur in the usual places – on the forehead flap that folds down, on the ear flaps and around the edges of the neck. Mother is 81; she has panache.

She wore it down to the bookmobile and into a couple of her thrift shop haunts. She doesn’t wear it to chop kindling; she says she doesn’t want to get it dirty.