Sorting Socks

B.N. Graves

I’ve always enjoyed doing laundry. There’s something intimate about the whole process. Nothing comes closer and stays as close for longer than your clothing. The articles cling to you all day, depending on you to wear and love them. I adore watching the colors fade; the rips and the holes widening and worsening over time. It’s like watching each garment grow up. With age, their once tight embrace loosens, stretching every fiber until they expire. Doing laundry is my silent way of protecting what has always been there for me. The minute you are born, you’re wrapped up in cloth and when you’re buried, you’re dressed in what you loved to wear most. I hope I’m lowered into the earth without socks on; I don’t care if my feet get cold.

Sorting socks was never in my repertoire. I was always one for folding bath towels. The problem with socks is there’s always one missing. It’s as if they vanish without a trace. When sorting socks, I always find myself wondering whether it was the washer or dryer that’s abducted the missing one of the pair. Sometimes I wish I could ride in the washer with my little tykes to ensure they don’t get lost, but that’s just absurd. Every time I pull my clothing from the dryer I announce, “I Am Woman!” Every last scrap of cloth is gathered up in my arms and a race against gravity ensues—refusing a hamper on the grounds that real women don’t need assistance when caring for their own. From the laundry room, through the kitchen, down the hall, and into the living room—the bundle nearly slipping through my fingers—I shove the heap onto the couch. A sock or two never making it to the end, leaving a trail of the inevitable behind.

When I’ve had a trying day I’ll sit with my darlings on the couch. Gathering them around me, the heat buzzing, still radiating from their tumble with the dryer. I breathe in the warm cotton-fresh scent. Rocking back and forth, smoothing my palms over their wrinkles, I whisper to them, “There—There … Shhh” and everything is quiet. Moments pass. Their heat wears off and their static shocks me, snapping, “Stop!” and I proceed to fold them into dark drawers and half empty closets.

I leave socks for last. I’ve never liked pairing them together. One always seems dirtier than its counterpart—as if it’d been temporarily paired with another. The worst is when one is left by its once partner to fend for itself in the collection basket of abandoned socks. I can’t bring myself to throw a lone sock away. I suppose I always figured I would use the deserted ones for sock puppets or sock monkeys or something of the sort, but it’s much too late for them now. The hamper I’m too proud to use sits in the back of my half empty closet, full of single socks, waiting.