A Lesson From the Laundry Basket

What a single sock can teach us about letting go

I tend to see things in pictures, and during a chat with a friend, an image popped into my mind.

Somewhere in the world, there must be a secret society of socks. It’s the only explanation I can come up with. How else do we start with a matching pair and end up with one lonely survivor staring back at us from the laundry basket?

I picture them slipping away through some portal in the spin cycle, landing in a club where all the runaway socks hang out. The argyles are in the corner sipping cocktails, tube socks are showing off on the dance floor, and that one sequined sock you bought on a whim but never wore? She is probably running the place.

Meanwhile, back at home, I am left with the awkward task of folding a single sock. What am I supposed to do with it? Keep it in the hope its partner comes back from sabbatical? Throw it out and feel like a traitor? Or start a drawer full of mismatched pairs and call it fashion forward?

Then again, maybe socks are not vanishing at all. Maybe they are teaching us something. Things, and sometimes people, walk beside us for a season only to take their leave. The trick, I suppose, is not to dwell on the missing but to smile at the mystery. To let the gaps become gentle reminders that even in something as ordinary as laundry, there is room for wonder.

Maybe the point is not to chase what is gone, but to marvel at what remains. Even one sock can remind us that companionship existed, and sometimes that is enough.