The Red Hat Rachel Hadas It started before Christmas. Now our son officially walks to school alone. Semi-alone, it’s accurate to say: I or his father track on the way. He walks up on the east side of West End,              5 we walk on the west side. Glances can extend (and do) across the street; not eye contact. Already ties are feelings and not fact. Straus Park is where these parallel paths part; he goes alone from there. The watcher’s heart       10 stretches, elastic in its love and fear, toward him as we see him disappear, striding briskly. Where two weeks ago, holding a hand, he’d dawdle, dreamy, slow, he now is hustled forward by the pull                     15 of something far more powerful than school.  The mornings we turn back to are no more than forty minutes longer than before, but they feel vastly different-flimsy, strange, wavering in the eddies of this change,                   20 empty, unanchored, perilously light since the red hat vanished from our sight. Questions 1.) What does the speaker mean in lines 10-11 when she       states "The watcher's heart stretches, elastic in its love       and fear"? 2.) Explain line 8: "Already ties are feelings and not fact." 3.) What is the force "more powerful than school" in line       16?

Analysis “The Red Hat” is a poem about a mother watching her child cross the divide of childhood into young adulthood.  The speaker is the mother who is watching her son grow up.  The audience is the public who is listening to her tale.  The purpose of the poem is to subtly warn other mothers to cherish their time with their children because the moment when they grow up will come too soon.  The occasion is the mother watching her child as he grows up right before her eyes and knowing that there is absolutely nothing she can do about it.  She knows that his first strike at independence (walking to school alone) is something that she must allow for him to do for himself if he is to grow up as a normal child.  Line 8 of the poem, which states, “Already ties are feelings and not fact,” is a direct statement of how the mother feels towards her son’s departure from childhood.  By the word “already,” she means that too soon he has suddenly grown.  “Ties” refers to the physical bond that the mother and child once shared.  Because he is now more independent, the bond between the parent and child is no longer physical but simply mental.  They have a mental bond through the strong feelings of love between themselves.  However, since he has determined for himself that he no longer needs a parental guide by his side, the physical bond they once shared of holding hands is now severed. Line 9 of the poem has an interesting combination of words in the phrase “parallel paths part.”  The use of the hard consonant “p” in this phrase describes the difficulty the parent feels in separating from the child.  Letting him go and walk alone the rest of the way to school is often more of a difficulty for a parent than for the child. The “force more powerful than school” in line 16 is a subject that can be speculated.  The speaker never quite specifies what this object could be, but the possibilities are endless.  The son could be rushing to meet friends to engage in a game of Tag or Dodgeball before the beginning of school.  Or he could be rushing to meet a love interest.  He could also be walking faster to prove that he realizes the importance of walking to school alone.  He could be walking faster now that he knows his destination and does not need an adult to remind him of where he is to go.  He could be walking faster in fear of running into trouble on his way there and is trying to avoid it by attempting to cheat time. The phrase “The watcher’s heart stretches, elastic in its love and fear,” in line 10-11 is an overstatement.  The watcher’s heart does not literally stretch towards the son.  Instead, the watcher wistfully watches the child walk away, desperately wanting to lead him to his destination but knowing that they cannot in order to preserve the social clock of the son.  The watcher’s love and fear for the child goes with the son as he quickly walks further and further away.  The separation between child and parent is a symbol.  In the poem, the speaker strictly speaks of a physical separation.  However, this separation is mental as well.  The child is slowly coming out of the protective bubble his parents provided.  As the parents slowly watch him walk away, they realize that his newfound independence is preparing them for the day when their son will walk away indefinitely from their sight.  The red hat in the last line of the poem serves as a physical representation of the separation between guardian and child.  Once that red hat went out of view, the guardian could no longer keep a glance on the son.  The hat serves as a symbol of the physical distance between the two.

poem taken from Perrine's Sound and Sense: 10th Edition (2002).