The Truth About Socks: navel-gazing in language shaded lavendar*

Of late, my task list--often writ on a yellow legal pad in black, felt tip marker--has been slightly shorter in length than that of task lists past.  At first, it was a cause for worrisome caution.  For a flitting moment of doubt, I wondered if my exotic, romantic life of writing all day in much the same way as the prosists of old whose fingers, stained with ink, devoted their lives to the beauty of the written word, and sharing said word with all who would come to their fountain of ideas to drink deeply.  It had been, indeed, a difficult decision (to say the least, if I may be so bold as to speak simply) to take leave of the traditional job that once bound me by the wrists and ankles to the world whose steady paychecks and benefits of health insurance and retirement have earned it the titles "safe" and "real."

There seems to be an upswing now, as my canary backgrounded task list seems to be lengthening, line by line, and I find myself spending more and more of my day watching the golden orb crossing the sky from behind my desk, the only tan kissing my skin from the electronic glow of my laptop.  It is a feeling unmatched to know that putting pen to paper--or fingers to keys, as is the case in this technological day and age--is a skill you possess and is desired by others from you in particular.  My heart was lifted at the need to devote more of my time to Microsoft Word, but this morning, as I stood at my black stove turning eggs, milk, and cheese to a protein-rich meal fit for the start of my day, I took a moment or two to look around me.  At this moment, my eyes free from the chains--happy though they be--that kept me from being shown the harsh truth that was underlying in what was my life these many days.

In addition to being distanced from the beauty of autumn in Orlando, Florida, which is one of the things that, until recently, was all that kept me from feeling the effects of being confined to a desk day after day with no contact outside of the three friendly felines whose companionship breathes life into our home and my husband, best friend, life partner, whose support and encouragement is the foundation of what will be the success of my career, as a direct result of the sharp black words etched hurriedly on my task list, I've come to a revelation that the task list written on white paper in blue ink--those tasks that pertain not to the life literary, but to the realm of home and hearth, such as the cleaning and organizational tasks (vacuuming, dishes, laundry, bills) that keep the home ready for any in-law that would suddenly stop by to say hello.  And it was these tasks, those I was letting slip by, unnoticed, while my fingers danced over the keys of my laptop keyboard hour after hour, day after day, that would prove to be my undoing this day.

With my laptop firmly closed, its power off, I saw the interior of the apartment not from the peripheral of my vision in between paragraphs, but in the full light of morning, with no distractions keeping me from realizing that, in my negligence of household chores during the days that writing took priority, they had, for the most part, been left undone, perhaps in the hopes some brownie would sneak into the apartment as we slept and turn the apartment from what it was into a home clean enough to be mistaken for a model apartment shown to prospective residents to give them an idea of the size and space of an apartment only seen as lines of a floor plan in a glossy brochure handed out by the chipper staff of the Leasing Office.

Regardless of several looming deadlines, hovering over me as a black cloud hovers over those who have walked under ladders or broken mirrors, I was forced from that moment to keep my office, inasmuch as it is an office, closed for the morning to allow myself the leave to rectify the situation.  I knew not if the disheveled apartment was a result of my dedication to the craft or the ability to visualize blinders on either side of my creative eyes to blot out all except the task at hand, but it was a situation I could no longer leave to the efforts of the brownies, who were surely, by this point, overwhelmed so that they would use their efforts more wisely in another home in which the primary care-giver to the household tasks spent time on those tasks rather than frivolous writing exercises and articles.

I deemed the laundry my first undertaking once my breakfast--eggs, milk, and cheese, if you remember--was safely installed in my stomach and the dishes in the sink to await such time as I put them in the dishwasher to be cleaned and sanitized, so I sorted the clothes in various hampers in the bedroom into piles according to color and directions for washing machine use.  As I did so, I made the startling discovery that the white athletic socks belonging to none other than the love of my life--my darling husband--were in quite a state of disrepair.  Many of these socks he wore every day sported holes in the toes or heels, the elastic ankles had been stretched so that the sock did not so much stay in place, but fell around his ankles as he moved about his business, and the bottoms of these cotton foot warmers were no longer white, but instead a revolting shade of grayish-brown indicating they'd not been washed often enough, and were now ready to be cut into dusting rags, or thrown into the waste bin completely, being exchanged for a freshly-purchased pair.

So, in a spontaneous effort toward multi-tasking, I started to separate some of these poor, worn-out socks who wanted nothing more than to be relieved of their duties, out of the white clothing pile that would be washed, and into a separate pile known to me as the pile of items to be disposed of and never seen again.  And it was during this textile act of the mundane that my darling and aforementioned husband, who to this point had had minimal interest in the workings of the laundry beyond asking the current location of whatever favorite shirt he sought for in vain within the unkempt drawers of the dresser, wandered into the living room area of the apartment and, upon noting my segregation of his beloved socks, asked why they were in a pile separate from the other white clothing to be washed.

I explained to him that these socks, though they served him well for a great deal of time, were no longer fit for service, and would enjoy spending their days in the Sock Retirement Village, commonly referred to as the garbage dump, where they would, being cotton, be eventually returned to the earth from whence they came; I assured him there would be new, bright white cotton socks to replace those that would be leaving our home, but my husband, much to my surprise, did not accept this news of the relieving of duty of his socks with as much grace as I expected.  Instead, he began to explain, calmly, of course, for my husband has learned that when there is something he wishes to win from me, his explanations must be calm and clear for me to be convinced, that these socks were not ready to be honorably discharged from his feet, but had a great deal of "wear left in them," and he fully intended to continue using these socks he described as comfortable.

I tried valiantly to convince him that he was being cruel not only to the socks by forcing them to continue to be stretched and washed and pulled and, when our three darling felines feel particularly playful, snagged, but he was being cruel to me in forcing me to continue to wash these poor socks that were being held together by the threadbare elastic left in them that was less elastic and more thread from being stretched so much by use.

It was another fifteen minutes, a full twenty-five percent of the face of a clock, before I, in a fit of frustration and being told these socks were still of use to a man who wasn't the one who washed them every day, took the pile of to-be-thrown-out socks from their waiting space on the living room floor and threw them into the garbage can, knowing full well my husband would not attempt to retrieve them from the depths of the white, plastic pit of breakfast crumbs and junk mail.

We stared at each other for a long moment, the air between us thick with the stubbornness we both possessed that often led us to moments not unlike the one we were sharing at that long moment.  After a moment, my husband turned and retreated to his computer, not a word spoken.

I went back to sorting clothes in various hampers in the bedroom into piles according to color and directions for washing machine use.

--

*I decided to get all this out of my system before November 1st.