Several years ago, my grandmother (a famously bad gift giver) got my brother, sister-in-law, and me big packages of the world's ugliest and most ill-fitting white socks for Christmas. All three of us sat there in perplexed horror as we pretended to be very happy with the gift. When she left the room, my brother looked at me and asked, in a voice filled with anguish and annoyance, "What are we going to do with these godawful socks?"
Normally, this question would have garnished basic sarcasm from me. But on this fateful day, I was inspired by the ages and said, "We wrap them up in a big, happy box and give them to Dad."
Christmas is always one of the trade offs on the divorced parent thing. Aside from just the fact that, in theory, you get more gifts, there is also the fact that if one event sucks, the other one might not be so bad. There is also the fact that you can regift on a very fast basis. This was one of those cases.
We wrapped up the offending fugly socks and drove over to my grandfather's house. All the way there, we would find ourselves snickering in anticipation of the moment when Dad opened the socks. At one point, I think my brother was laughing so hard, he had to pull the car over for a few minutes.
The moment didn't disappoint either. When Dad opened the socks, the look of dismay and confusion was everything we thought it would be. Through giggles, we explained to him how he'd come to gain possession of his new socks. He laughed with us and we laughed all the way home, even calling our mother to tell her what we did.
The gift of the socks didn't end there. The next year, my dad managed to sneak them back to my brother. A while later, my brother got them back to him. In the years that followed, the socks have been returned over and over again, sometimes for Christmas, sometimes for birthdays. Last year, my sister-in-law got my step-mom a purse for her Christmas, fully packed with the socks inside of it.
You know, I hear a lot of people talk about how the destruction of the traditional family has ruined the rituals and histories that tie people together. I know in some cases that is possibly true, but not always. My brother and I aren't as close to my dad as many other people are to theirs, but we do have this Sock Gift thing going with him. And it wasn't one of those fake, "let's make something to let us all be a family" things. This was spontaneous and meant as a joke. Somehow though, it became something more. And while we probably would never sit around and talk about it, it's important to us.
I think maybe the really beautiful thing about this, if there is a beautiful part to it, is how no one wanted these stupid socks. We pass them around to each other like a hot potato, acting like they really are the worst things in the world. Yet somehow, we love these socks now, because they are a part of how we interact as a family.
This year for Christmas, I got a mattress topper. You know, one of those thick, cushy, wonderful things that makes even the most evilly uncomfortable bed a reasonable place to sleep. Like any good procrastinator, I didn't actually put it on my bed until just today. As I was unzipping the package it came in, I realized I had no idea where the socks had ended up. I paused and looked at the bag, realizing it would be the perfect place to hide them. I smiles a little to myself, thinking about all the ways I could return them to the rest of the family.
When I flipped the topper out, however, there were no socks to be seen. I had been spared the sock curse. I was happy about that . . . but maybe just a little disappointed.
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