This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Approaching the new year, husband and I looked around the house with an objective eye, evaluating the potential contents of our upcoming 12 months’ “Apocalist.” This is our revolving litany of things undone, or partially done, some of which are highly necessary – a working furnace from November through April, for example. And some that are not, like painting and re-pebbling the window wells, or installing lighted walkways from all the rooms directly to the snacks, both of which could be considered non-urgent. Before you laugh, the window wells look fabulous.
We’re a good team, in that I devise needed improvements, and he executes them in the form of knocking down walls and creating rooms, shelving and storage out of thin air. He’s functional, I’m aesthetic. He almost doesn’t care if it looks good and I almost don’t care if it works. Isn’t that feng shui?
As we were visually barraged with ailments common to homeowners everywhere and our home-improvement nerves began to fray in the face of ratty carpets, stale countertops, shoddy indoor soccer facilities, and an appalling lack of unicorn feeding troughs and hot chocolate waterfalls, one chore lurked quietly in the background: the mismatched sock basket. They say if you stare too long into the writhing mass of neglected footwear, you’ll sprout lint on your eyeballs. We have dutifully averted our eyes from the growing pile atop the dryer for endless Sundays, but as we contemplated the 2018 "Apocalist", we were jointly struck by the idiocy of a small mountain of single socks.
Firstly, let’s all acknowledge the dilemma this presents. Certainly, as humans we tend to have two feet so it makes sense to create footwear in pairs. The footwear is historically to protect the foot, to keep it warm and safe from puncture wounds. However, nowhere is it written that what is worn on the left must be identical to what is worn on the right in order to function properly. It was decided, though, and now, that condition of unmatched items that were created as a matched pair drive the Western world anyway, headlong into sensory oxidization. i.e., we explode.
With socks, our reaction, prior to explosion is mystification. We are truly awed, bewildered in a way akin to a child watching grandpa take off his nose or pull a quarter right out of his ear. Totally perplexed. Two socks go in the machine, water goes in, with soap. There is spinning and then - presto! - there is one sock. Put that single sock in the dryer and - trust me on this - nine times out of 10, it does not regenerate or manage to find its mate during its time twirling about in hot air.
We maintain the single sock population like naughty stray kittens who keep showing up at the door until a place is dedicated for them in the home. But socks aren’t cute. Especially loser single socks. And they contribute nothing except a daily reminder that you are deficient in some fundamental way. At least enough to lose one half of a pair of socks, repeatedly, until you have what amounts to a sock prison. They don’t leave. If you happen to stumble on a mate, rather than finding the convicted sock, you throw the mate in as well - maybe they’ll tunnel together into a dresser drawer? I mean, you never want to confront the inmates because of the unspoken fact of the situation: every sock in sock detention has a mate somewhere, which is: a) potentially dangerous and b) ridiculous. You have been outwitted by a pair of socks.
It’s understandable to believe that a missing sock has fallen through the cracks; with eight people in our house, it could turn up in a sandwich. So, it makes sense to keep single socks quarantined from the general sock population in the hope that its mate will surface. But there are socks in our basket of match.com rejects that have not fit any of the feet in this family for years.
So, it was time to let go. On this night of looming New Year’s resolutions to be made, commitments to make it either look good or work, depending on your perspective, my husband took hold of that basket. Eschewing the imbalance to the household ecosystem by removing things that have co-existed with us for literally generations – of socks, anyway – he declared “I am taking care of the odd socks once and for all.” He took the latest clean batch and the sequestered constituency of loners and proceeded to pardon, parole or “eliminate” until the incarceration unit was empty.
It struck me then, that this – like taxes, Black Friday sales or a bikini wax –- was not something a person should tackle alone. I volunteered to help, under the condition that we make it fun, by playing sock rummy, sock poker or some version thereof. He confirmed that I was serious and we sat down to commence play.
How would it go? We considered rules. One of our six children who happened to be in the room, caught the general idea of what we were contemplating and informed us that we are total dorks. He then plopped down next to us to play. Another questioned, “Wait, you’re not actually playing a card game with socks?” And then advised all in the room that it was a completely stupid idea – before sitting down and announcing “I wanna play!” After the requisite derisory comments, we got a third and a fourth, for a total of six in this odd little game that we’d just conceived.
Our game ended up something like “Go Fish,” as we didn’t have suits, or Hoyle’s book of sock rules to reference. Each player scrabbled around in the laundry basket and drew his “hand” of seven socks and placed them behind their back. In turns, we queried the group, “Does anyone have this sock?” holding up a lonely pink anklet or a Nike calf sock or some avant garde teen sock with alpacas wearing Hawaiian leis. Yes, those. The player would then be rewarded with it’s mate or told to “Go Sock!”
We had to close our eyes when fishing socks out of the basket, but a keen photographic memory enabled some of us to study the basket and the location of what appeared to be mates to others’ previously introduced singles. Occasionally, players were accused of cheating. Occasionally, I cheated. I definitely snuck a bunch of prisoners out through the slots in the laundry basket. Given the non-violent nature of the crime of being an oddball, it’s a minimum-security facility.
It was fun. Serious fun, as the stakes grew in the form of matched pairs laid out in front of each player. Competitiveness, never in short supply among six siblings, reared its head and this was no longer a gentle exchange of footwear. Caught up, I could not decide if I was reluctant to give up one from my “hand” so that someone else would score a pair or ecstatic that pairs were being formed! I kept thinking: “Weekend trips, dinners out, picnics, hiking, skiing, board games, build-your-own-pizza, allowances, birthday parties, trampoline parks - what we do in the name of family cohesion and all it would have required was sorting laundry? Are you kidding me?”
We played until no additional matches could be made, and granted, they would not, for I knew full well that some of the mates were sitting alone in my top dresser drawer! Prison is not for everyone.
The winner got a dollar. I’m considering a Pay-to-Play version or creating something like Old Maid, but we’ll call it Toe Cheese, where some of the socks be pre-filled with a small cube of cheese and if you end up with one as the result of an ask or a “Go Sock,” you’d lose a turn. This is doable – hell, we might find cheese already being stored in a few.
It was an evening I will remember for more than the fact that we stood up to the menacing pile of degenerate socks. You see, not alone are we responsible for the six in the brood. Ours is a blended family and on top of that, one of textbook hormonal imbalance. The offspring range from pre-tween to uberteen and then there are a couple of hormonally confused dinosaurs who fell in love and forced everyone to live together. We run the bunch and every union of eight is an opportunity for Grumpy, Sleepy, Ragey, Crazy, Selfie, Sneaky, Farty and Cheesy to showcase their best qualities. So I embrace the successful family connections like small life achievements. How often we strategize about ways to bring the kids closer together only to find out maybe next week it will be a rousing game of Showerdrain!
Bear with me while I stretch a few metaphors. There’s a lot going on, here in the present, with families of any size. You have to pay attention. Like fishing, in life, you don’t always notice the small bites on the end of your line. Then you feel one that gives you a run for your money – feisty, with intent. That brief contest with a rod and reel reminds me a bit of the daily upheavals among our closest relations that can seem like they are about to overturn your little boat, which moments ago was bobbing peacefully in the sun.
Perhaps discord among the family you’ve chosen feels more disconcerting than it might with the family you won in the scratch-off lottery. Choice adds the element of accountability. “I’ve built what I thought was a very seaworthy vessel, yet, it seems very possibly like we are capsizing here. Where did I go wrong? I simply could not have foreseen this.” It’s a severe and unexpected tilt toward unknown, unexplored depths. Stepping back though, you can see that this thing, most things tugging on your line from day to day are actually too small to worry about. Though they thrash wildly, splashing and threatening to slip out of your control or take you down with them - you need to take the deep breath – reel the chaos in, examine it and throw it back like the little fish it is.
As, one by one, my husband and I were joined by our skeptical children in a game we’d created mostly in jest, it seems we’d gone fishing again. We threw out some bait on a whim because, we’re parents. We never stop working to get it right. We fished the heck out of that sock basket. I guess it will have to be restocked and I’ve no doubt that it will be a rich hunting ground in a few months. Possibly even on purpose.
For me, as stepmom to four and mommy to two, this wasn’t about a tedious chore. It was about the spontaneous harmony - an elusive, always hoped for coming together - of more than socks. Like when one helps another with homework, or when we not only survive, but enjoy a family road trip, when a restaurant is chosen amicably, the XBox shared graciously, a week passes without anyone threatening to leave home, I was thinking “Best Thursday Night Ever.” We laughed, joked and played – we made a memory and years worth of orphaned socks were happily reunited. I lost the game by a wide margin, but felt like I’d caught the big one. I got the picture as proof, thought my memory tells an even better story, that will probably grow over time. Embellishments notwithstanding, it's a keeper.
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I wish for everyone, in 2018 to be able to find moments of joy in unlikely places.
-Dana
