One sock recovered

Several weeks ago I put away my summer socks and brought out the winter socks. I have a sock affection like some people have a shoe affection (which I used to have). My socks have to be all cotton or all wool, and no elastic. None. Zero.

Wool socks are easy. I knit them. Cotton, extremely difficult to source. I spent a lot of time looking for the perfect cotton sock. Not too thick. No elastic. The brand I used to buy disappeared. That happens with bras, too. Good ones disappear in one fashion cycle, to be replaced by the newest version of feminine figure.

Why couldn't I find a nice, thin cotton sock, like the Buster Browns I remembered? Buster Browns! I tracked them down in a flash; they’re still available. In packs of six! That’s a marketing device. Weeks come in sevens, why not socks? I purchased two packs of six, each rather expensive. But, they were made in America, and I wanted cotton socks without elastic.

All went well the first year or two; my socks had a mate each week, the tops folded nicely and away to the closet. Even if I came up one sock short, I could find it in the underwear, or stuck to a shirt. But one day, I couldn't. It was nowhere. Eventually I blamed the cat, and stuck the lonely white sock to the back, just in case. In more than a year the mate has not come back.

The week I washed my cotton socks for the last time before putting them up for winter, one was missing. This time a beige sock. After shaking down the laundry I moved out every piece of furniture in the bedroom, the better to look under. And clean, while I was there.

No sock. I retraced steps, scoured the laundry room, no sock. The beige single joined the white single several weeks ago.

As soon as I walked into the laundry room today, I saw it. The beige sock, crumpled against the wall. I cannot blame the cat; he won’t go into the basement.

My sister had a complex theory once, that missing socks hitched a ride with the towels, and once in the towel drawer made for the black hole vortex at the back, anxious to join the universe of missing objects. I was about to give socks that much credit. That is, until the beige sock lay crumpled on the floor. Could it have been spit back?