That fall when my son was five, he spent a long time putting on his socks one morning. I’d already made breakfast and set it on the table, but he was still sitting on his bedroom floor, each sock half on, trying to decide which pair to wear.
He had a whole drawer full of socks. Most were white or gray with little stripes, and a few had patterns — the ones he’d picked out himself. That morning, he held a dinosaur sock in his left hand, orange with a T rex on it, and a plain blue one in his right. He held them up and asked, “Mom, can I wear mismatched socks?”
I glanced at the clock. 8:20. Fifteen minutes until we had to leave. I asked why he wanted to wear different ones. He said because he liked both, and he was already wearing his dinosaur shirt today, so the dinosaur sock would match, but the blue one was really nice too.
I told him kids at school might make fun of him. He said no, Eli wore mismatched socks yesterday. I said Eli’s were both striped, even if they were different, but a dinosaur and a plain blue didn’t go together at all.
He didn’t answer. He put both socks on his knees and stared at them for a long time.
I said wear the dinosaur one, it matches your shirt. He didn’t move. I said maybe the blue one, that’s safer. He still didn’t move.
I stood at the doorway holding his plate. The milk in the cup was getting warm, and the jam was starting to drip off his toast. He looked at the socks for another moment, then put the dinosaur sock on his left foot and the blue one on his right. He stood up, looked down at his feet, then looked up at me.
I said, “You sure?” He said yes.
I didn’t say anything else. I set the plate on the table and told him to come eat. He ran over and sat down, took a bite of toast, and got jam on his chin. I handed him a napkin. He wiped it off and kept eating.
When I dropped him off at school that morning, he made a point of pulling up his pant legs to show off his mismatched socks. He walked a few steps, looked back at me, grinned, and ran into the building.
When I picked him up in the afternoon, his pant legs were back down. In the car, I asked if anyone noticed his socks. He said yeah, Mia said your socks don’t match. I said, “And then?” He said, “And then I said, that’s because my left foot and my right foot felt different today.”
I started the car and didn’t say anything. At a red light, I glanced in the rearview mirror. He was leaning back in his seat, folding a piece of paper into an airplane. The light turned green, and I pressed the gas.
That night when I was folding laundry, I found a lone striped sock in the dryer. Gray with little dots. I couldn’t remember how long it had been there. I put it in the drawer with the dinosaur sock and the blue one. I closed the drawer and didn’t open it again.
The next morning, he opened the drawer himself and grabbed two gray ones. He put them on. He didn’t mention the day before, and I didn’t ask. That blue sock and that dinosaur sock never appeared together again. But I knew — they had been together once.
