Wednesday, January 25, 2006

from

Hot Off the Argyle: Lost-Sock-Wrangler Poet
Re-Socked by Hir New York Dad!!!



My father is a wonder... is amazing, as a good father should be, eh?

Earlier this cold month while I was in NY visiting my father who I absolutely adore, I had occasion to put a laundry-load in his washing machine, & in due process, the dryer. Then I went to take a shower while waiting for my wash to get done. At which point my helpful sister Jo offered to look after my laundry. She's so sweet. Jo checked and folded it all real nice, even though she needn't have had anything to do with my laundry (and lord knows that growing up right there in that same house, with the same washer and dryer, we would not have offered each other any such graciousness, eh?--or very little, and not easily...). But here we are, and so I find it fun to say that.

Well, out of that, I had a loner sock. A bit of a tweak in that since I don't like loner socks--I'm something of an a-retentive sort about laundry match-ups. Too many kids' socks lost over the years or something... Also, I'm just a logical mother fucker: if a certain number (of paired socks) goes into the laundry together, then the same number of them should come out of it... together! It only takes a human to ferret :) them out and back together, right?

So, okay, *there was that one stray sock* image of dismay for me : on top of the pile of folded laundry, so nicely, so generously, put at the end of the brass bed I splept in at our dad's. Yes, there was my pile of laundry put by my sweet sister. And there was one stray sock on top of the pile. One from a pair of socks I kind of liked, too. That one was so obviously missing its nylon, 2-D-appearing, fake-foot-shaped other. I bought that pair special for the trip. My particularities of personality told me: those two socks definitely deserved to be together. But: one was lost. Could be lost in my many other similar colored articles of clothing: I might find the lost sock clinging with static to a sleeve of a shirt or a pants' leg, eh?

Okay, chris, I said in the moment, so ya win some and ya lose some (one sock does not a city or a pants' or even a shirt, make, or some such bumfuck thought like that), I reminded myself (that it was an unimportant problem, this lost sock). A sock is just a sock. One lone sock. A silly sock. A non-socks-sock. How many one-socks are there right now out there in the world? Dunno, dunna wanta kno: isn't it better when a one-sock is matched up with the sock that is its best or only other?--and so I thought, and think, but cannot dwell too much on because the demands of the rest of my life are not about socks at all). Truly. Confession [or congestion]: I often wish My OWN Life really was only about washing and finding socks--so, I must be nuts, right?--clearly teaching at a university is far better work and opportunity than washing and matching up socks, eh!!!--right!!!!--but hey, Y'all: who is/was that with all the excess punctuation there?--um, dunno].

Me?--I would find every sock, ever, that might need its other. Truly.

But I am human, viz: inadequate.

Then again there is deus ex machina to save the something you never, every:

In the mail today I received a note from my Dad--a sort of a squishy feeling envelope with a hand written note. And I knew right away what joyously gratifying object signifying my terrific lost desires might be in there: Yikes!! it was that one absolute and lost sock!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It felt so very full of closure's non-closure that it gave me great suspect pleasure, translated as reverb JOY!! As said two lines above with accompanying punky-marks ...

Yes, that missing sock, thank goodness (now, how many of you out there would have already, across place and time, thrown out that lost/found sock's other?--I'm so weird I kept the other sock and brought it back here with me--I'm a saver, ya kno?), because I never give up, and because of a happy accident and astute Dad, I can now happily reunite the one sock with its differently journeyed other. WooHOO

How?

Hah: Dad & US Mail!

Best of all is this dear, dear, note (given line-by-line here) from Dad:

Hi Chris

This is the first

time in all my [**!] yrs I've

sent a sock

in the mail.

I found it in my

dryer.

Love,
DAD

So, indeed, the man who faithfully forwards all kinds of fathomless other mail,
now sends me a single sock...

& Ah, as Mom, gone now for ten years, might say,
It really is all about love, the lost-sock-wrangling,
& I thank you for the opportunity to match the two back up.

She definitely was like that--major thematic--bless her heart
(xoxoxo, to you Mom).

And as I also say:

Dad! You rock! Thanks for the sock
back
or the back-sock!! & by mail!
so cool...

Love,
chris

And as I'd like y'all to know:

so dear, this dad of mine ...
how many Dads would think to do this,
singular, everyday, wonderful thing?
My Dad's always wowed me, I thought,
as I opened the envelope with the sock in it,
plying it yet also already knowing exactly what it was.
Yeah.

Keep on, Y'all.