Socks

The Missing

My socks don’t pair well.

Typically after folding a load of laundry, the sock:sock ratio doesn’t add up.

Today, my right socks outnumbered my left, 4 - 2.

The four rights had no match from the two lefts.

Part of this is my fault, ordering the same color and the same style from the same company. Sometimes the style changes ever so slightly, perhaps a bit more padded around the ankle, but not enough to really notice, particularly when a load of laundry is folded in a hurry.

Until the rights outnumber the lefts.

If time permits, I dump out the sock bag shoved inside my dresser drawer, unpair all my same color socks and place the rights on the right and the lefts on the left and carefully, give the socks a proper coupling under a bright light.

Old style with old style, new with new. Double check for padded ankles.

This morning, when all was paired and done, two more right socks were discovered stuffed in the sock bag, making the new count 6-2. The new rights didn’t match either of the newly washed lefts.

How can I be so sure the socks are paired correctly since the majority look alike?

Ah, good question.

Each sock - under the big toe - is stamped with an R or a L. What goes in the wash should come out in the wash.

So today, I successfully matched one laundered right with a left stuffed in my sock bag from a previous wash cycle. It was like a Barbara Streisand/Robert Redford/The Way We Were moment: “You’ll never find anyone as good for you as I am …”

As far as the extra others, I paired the rights with rights and did the same with the couple leftover lefts. My uneven sock majority has increased by two paired rights and one pair paired left, with the odd right (newly independent and all alone) tossed into the sock bag.

Let me add, a right or left sock worn on the wrong foot tends not to wear well. It puts the squeeze on the little piggie pinky toe.

My hope, eventually the socks will all come together in the wash and what a joyous day that will be.

The Ingalls Homestead De Smet, SD cShereeShatsky

THINGS I SAY TO MYSELF WHILE HANGING LAUNDRY

by Ruth Stone

If an ant, crossing on the clothesline

from apple tree to apple tree,

would think and think,

it probably could not dream up Albert Einstein.

Or even his sloppy moustache;

or the wrinkled skin bags under his eyes

that puffed out years later,

after he dreamed up that maddening relativity.

Even laundry is three-dimensional.

The ants cross its great fibrous forests

from clothespin to clothespin

carrying the very heart of life in their sacs or mandibles,

the very heart of the universe in their formic acid molecules.

And how refreshing the linens are,

lying in the clean sheets at night,

when you seem to be the only one on the mountain,

and your body feels the smooth touch of the bed

like love against your skin;

and the heavy sac of yourself relaxes into its embrace.

When you turn out the light,

you are blind in the dark

as perhaps the ants are blind,

with the same abstract leap out of this limiting dimension.

So that the very curve of light,

as it is pulled in the dimple of space,

is relative to your own blind pathway across the abyss.

And there in the dark is Albert Einstein

with his clever formula that looks like little mandibles

digging tunnels into the earth

and bringing it up, grain by grain,

the crystals of sand exploding

into white-hot radiant turbulence,

smiling at you, his shy bushy smile,

along an imaginary line from here to there.

Simplicity, published in 1995 by Paris Press.

***

Learn more about Ruth Stone and the Ruth Stone House here.

Thank you for reading.