GRANDPA'S SOCKS
“And since I owned them, I wore them.”
I always liked my feet because they were a mirror image of my mom’s. But after she died I could hardly look at them without crying. They reminded me too much of my loss. As it does for most things, however, the universe had a fix.
One morning a few months after my mother’s death, I was awoken by a jolt of pain in my right foot. I sat up, looked down and saw the source immediately. My outer toes were red, angry and bruised. It was agony. Hoping for a cure for my physical, if not emotional, suffering, I went to the doctor. “Bunions,” he said.
It went so much deeper than that, though. It meant that I in fact do not have my mom’s feet. Bunions are a hereditary issue, said the doctor, and my mother didn’t have them.
But you know who did? My paternal grandpa. How can I be so sure? Because when he died, when I was 17, I inherited a pile of his socks. Why would a teenage girl end up with her dad’s dad’s socks? Because when the family gathered to go through his things and I saw them sitting in the box unclaimed, fated for the donation truck, it hurt my heart, so I took them home. And since I owned them, I wore them. And upon wearing them, I found secret little gifts inside: white foam bunion pads. My grandpa fought in some of the fiercest battles of WWII, including the Battle of the Bulge. His feet had earned their bunions.
My own feet are now puffy and weird-looking. They no longer resemble my mother’s feet, the feet I massaged one final time a few days before she died; by then, cancer had withered and ravaged her body, but her feet, as I gently rubbed them with lotion, were still beautiful. Mine now match my grandpa’s. And that’s a good thing. I can look at them without feeling the stabbing pain of loss. Instead of crying, I actually laugh, because…bunions. My grandpa liked to crack jokes and pull pranks, and this might be his best one yet.
—Jody Wenner
Jody Wenner, a mom, wife and crafter, is also a writer of mysteries, suspense and literary fiction. Her books are available on Amazon.