Socks on the Floor

Early in our marriage, my husband had a habit of forgetting his socks on the bathroom floor after his nighttime shower. It’s a short trip to the hamper, yet somehow, everything but the socks made it. Initially, I would make a sweet/humorous hint. “Honey - are you through with your socks?”

“Sorry - I’ll get them.”

“That’s okay - I have them.”

Such was our nightly routine. After a few months, I began to be bothered by the whole business. It’s not like it took extra effort to attend to them. They weren’t bathroom floor camouflage socks. He simply forgot them.

Thus it went for several months until I found myself growing more and more irritated by those socks. What was the problem? Why couldn’t this man, with a graduate degree and responsible for tens of millions of dollars at work, put his socks in the hamper? It began to really get under my skin. That’s when the shrink in me came out.

Why was I so annoyed? And what would I say to a therapy client who had this complaint? I knew exactly what I would say. I would ask, “What harm do the socks on the floor cause you?” and “What is the worst thing that can happen if he never remembers to pick up his socks?”

I decided then and there that picking up his socks was an expression of my love for this man - this man who stood up and promised the rest of his life to me. This loving, thoughtful, patient, splendid man. I shut up about the damn socks.

Several years later, after my shower, I heard my sweet husband’s voice float out of the bathroom: “Honey, are you through with your stockings?” As he put them in the hamper, I laughed so hard I almost peed. And I was so very grateful I had been quietly picking up this amazing man's socks all those years.

© 2010 by Alice Clearman Fusco