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He doesn’t remember it until he’s halfway through a video call with Henry. He’s grinning in that genuine way he always does when he talks to Ted, and chatting a mile a minute—or, a kilometer a minute, he supposes he should be saying now—about his week at school. They’re having a spirit week, and Henry is going all out, as to be expected from Teds son. Yesterday was Silly Hat Day, and he’d sent several pictures to Ted already of the hat he’d made; stayed up all night to glue plastic farm animals on the brim of an old ball cap and make a farm scene across the bill and up to the crown of it. Apparently it was the talk of his class, and now he’s showing off his mismatched clothes for Ted. It’s Backwards Day, and he’s even gone through the trouble of wearing his jeans inside out, though Ted thinks just the shirt would have been fine enough, laughing at the way Henry keeps reaching to fiddle with the tag that sticks out. He’s convinced his mom to have reverse meals, too, just to get into the spirit of it, and Ted has to admit he admires the dedication he has to the bit, especially if he’s electing to eat a full turkey leg for breakfast.
And then Henry lifts his leg and plants his foot into view on the coffee table, showing off his red tennis shoe and a neon green sock that goes all the way up to his knee. That’s not troubling on its own, but then he’s trading off to show Ted his left foot, and that one has an old sandal and a spotted orange sock, and Teds breath catches in his throat.
He thinks about it the rest of the day. It’s something so small—so insignificant in the grand scheme of things that he forgot just how important it had once been to him. It feels like a lifetime ago he was a kid the same age as Henry, sitting at the breakfast table while his dad sat across from him and asked him to guess which socks he was wearing that day. He can’t remember when it started, that small ritual, but he remembers when it stopped. He tries not to think about that, rewinding his memories like a cassette tape from his childhood, and untangling the film.
Its so stupid. So small, and insignificant, and yet Ted can’t pull himself away from it. His dads mismatched socks every day—always buying the most ridiculous pairs to mix up and wear out. You wouldn’t know, looking at him, that he had one pink sock and one blue on under his suit, and Ted always felt like he was sharing a secret with his father that he was the only one who knew. He used to tell Ted that it reminded him not to take himself so serious; that incorporating in small joys into the day made everything a bit easier. A bit funnier.
And then Ted was at his funeral and nothing was funny at all, and he couldn’t bring himself to ask if they’d remembered to mismatch his socks before they buried him. He’ll never know, and somehow that’s the worst part; the idea of never knowing if he let his dad down. Dr Fieldstone would have something to say about that, he knows, and tries to find her voice in his head, prod it into telling him what to feel or how to face it, but she’s stubbornly quiet today. The whole flat is quiet, and he almost thinks he can hear the static feeling that’s prickling up his fingertips.
It takes longer than he’s used to for his breathing exercises to bring him back from the brink. Sometimes he can anticipate the swell of anxiety, but days like today he can’t quite chase it away until it’s right up on him, looming like one of those Scooby Doo villains, and he’s got to pull the mask off and face what his brain is doing to itself.
He doesn’t think he can sit in the flat any longer, thinking about the single socks that used to be strewn around his childhood home. He locks up and heads out, not sure where he’s going, exactly, but needing to be around people. To move. To breathe without that rubber band tightness around his chest.
He wanders through a few different shops before ducking into an out of the way little gift shop. They sell little knitting kits to make tea cozies, and he thinks about picking one up for Bumbercatch. That’s something he’s picked up from his mother; buying little gifts for people whenever he can, to remind them that they’re thought of. That they’re seen. He wishes that they’d she’d able to see his father as well as she saw everyone else. Wishes he hadn’t hidden from her. They sell socks here, but not the practical kind. They’re all kinds his dad would have brought home; blue with donut print, pairs with corgi butts, some covered in glittering constellations. He’d have loved it, and Ted puts them in his basket before he can talk himself out of it.
He thinks, by the time he is back at home, that he should return them. It’s a stupid thing to do, he doesn’t need more socks. He’s got more than enough as it is, and what’s better, they’re all the same and can’t get mixed up. They sit in his dresser drawer for two day before he snips the packaging and mixes all them together in a pile. His heart is racing in his throat, looking in big at the dozen odd pair and picking up two opposing designs with shaking fingers. One pink with gold stripes, the other yellow with blue party hats. He doesn’t remember deciding to do it, but he does, and when he gets them on his feet he is surprised he doesn’t feel like he’s suffocating. Instead, it’s like some internal part of him is exhaling. So it becomes a thing.
Where his feet feel heavy the first few times he does it, he adapts to the lightness that starts to follow. Looks forward to it, even, and stops at several shops to pick up more pairs the longer he continues with it. He keeps expecting it to stop; for the action to catch up with him, but it never quite does in the way he expects.
Nobody can see them, not with the pants he’s wearing going over his ankles, but it doesn’t matter. He feels closer to his dad than he has in a long time, and even though it hurts it feels like it’s healing. Maybe not everything has to be so bad, or so hard. He can make small steps. Reconcile what he knows with what he can do about it. Bridge a gap he hadn’t gotten to when he had the chance. He knows someone will be bound to bring it up eventually, and he’s almost scared what it will trigger in him when someone does notice, but it isn’t so bad in the end.
It’s Colin that asks him about it, so many months down the line he has forgotten to keep track of whether his feet are showing or not. It’s become automatic. A small daily ode to his father. And he must have projected the sensitive nature of his feelings for the socks at some point, because Colin is so gentle with his asking, his gaze earnest and lit with curiosity as he slides into the seat next to Ted on the bus.
So Ted tells him, the full and unflinching truth, and Colin listens and squeezes his shoulder, and he doesn’t give him that same look of pity that everyone else does when he brings up the way his dad died. Instead, Colin asks him to tell stories about his dad. The good ones, not the kind he’d be asked about in therapy or the ones he thinks about when it’s too dark or too lonely in his flat.
He surprises himself by doing it, giving Colin glimpse of a past he feels so close to yet so far removed from, and not feeling the same bitterness he would have before. The guilt is still there in some undercurrent, but it’s not the sweeping tide it used to be. He doesn’t have to avoid every aspect of his fathers memory any longer.
It’s why he is so touched when he enters the locker room for practice on an early morning midway through the season, and every team member is wearing mismatched socks. Some patterned, some textured, one even with jingling bells and led lights flashing as the eye of a cat. Colin takes him aside with an anxious half-smile and tells him that the team wanted to do something special for him on his fathers birthday.
Ted hadn’t even realized. He knows there’s a Facebook alert that goes out each year to remind him, but he hadn’t known anyone even cared enough about it anymore to make a big deal about it. He always thought that the birthday before his death would be the last one for his father that ever got celebrated. He’d never had the heart to do it on his own.
He’s struck by the care, and that Colin takes the time to pull him aside and check in on him before they cut the cake. It’s touching of them all, and the best thing about it is that it’s the exact type of legacy Ted knows his father would have wanted to leave.
He has one of the cupcakes that he’s offered, and they all have a somber moment of reflection on their lost loved ones before they go out for practice. It’s an easy day, and Ted feels like it’s the first time in a long time he’s been able to take a full breath of life as he watches them all roll around on the pitch and play wrestle. This is what his father would have wanted to see for him. The kind of thing he wishes he’d stuck around for, but is learning to enjoy even if he didn’t. The small, secret joys in otherwise insignificant days. Mismatched socks under ordinary trousers.