I’m resting in California after four days of teaching spread over five days in a stunning downtown space in Portland, Oregon, warmly hosted by Melinda Iglesias Wheeler and Arista Gates, who even made daily congee.
Everywhere I go I see a pattern that reminds me of a great traditional story. Here it is as told by Andrew:
So it was that on a fine summer day a mother and her young son went for a walk on a beach by the sea. The water was calm, the air still, and the sunshine lovely. But from seeming nowhere, a rogue wave spilled from the ocean, knocked both mother and son off their feet, and when the mother was able to stand and catch some breath, the sea was again quiet and calm, but her son was nowhere to be seen. Gone.
Well, with mother’s courage, she stomped her bare foot on the soft sand and addressed the ocean, “Lord, you give me my son back, right away, NOW!” And sure enough, from the placid sea another rogue wave crashed the shore, knocking the woman into the sand, rolling in the surf’s intensity. When she sputtered and stood, there was her son, dazed but well enough, right next to her.
The mother nodded, a gesture mixed with fear of the Lord and a primordial satisfaction in the Lord’s grace and goodness. But again, she turned to the sea, again she stamped her foot into the sand, and declared, “He had a hat!”
No doubt this story is about gratitude and grace, but the return of the hat is my point of contention. When my children were born, hats arrived in the mail ad infinitum—dozens of them knitted by my mother and even more sent as hand-me-downs by friends. It seems that since time immemorial a hat was considered essential wear for babies.
In the last few weeks, in eleven cities in six countries, I’ve seen countless babies in slings and front carriers—which is fantastic to see—but a curious and vast majority of them had no hat.
Why? Is the cold plunge fad now affecting babies? How can this knowledge be lost when it is crucial that a baby’s head be kept warm? I can watch people doing all kinds of things that are self-damaging and bite my lip, but I have to say, even though I’ve managed to be impeccably quiet on the street, this one tests my equanimity.
Babies have underdeveloped wei qi (immune systems). They haven’t yet acquired the strength to ward off an invasion of cold, which can be deadly. Imagine putting a baby in an ice bath! Everyone knows intuitively that that would be unspeakably shocking. Inside the head is the brain, the Sea of Jing, the constitutional essence and deepest level of qi, surrounded by bones that are still soft, with great gaps between them. The interface between the Jing and the atmosphere is delicate—it is veil like. Constitutional essence, if cooled, becomes denser and slower, sluggish in the unfolding of destiny, potentially resulting in stunted growth, impaired intelligence, juvenile arthritis, frequent urination, colds and bronchitis as the body attempts to get rid of the cold, slowed digestion as Jing finances the digestive tract, compromised future fertility, and even fear as the kidney qi is stagnated.
Yes, they all had hats. Give that hat back!
Ann Cecil-Sterman,
Mill Valley, CA
October 1st, 2026
My truly amazing sister-in-law, Janine, with daughter Abigail and our children, Ravi and Miriam all in originals by my mother, Marjorie.