Tube Socks

                Last semester, one of my students wrote an essay that included an anecdote that touched my heart. He told of the day he became aware of his suspicion that his family culture wasn’t “cool.” He had been invited on a ski trip with a more wealthy friend’s family. Hanging out in the condo with this other family, he had noticed their cool cold-weather clothing—thin, state-of-the-art ski pants and jackets where his own were the old-fashioned, overstuffed-looking ski bibs, for example. And the socks. The other family had cool, fitted, thin socks meant for cold weather. He had his family’s usual white tube socks.

                I loved this scene for many reasons, one of which was that it was well-told, but another of which was that I recognized those ski-bibs, those tube socks. I come from a tube-sock family myself.

                Does everyone have those moments when you realize that something that was just a part of your routine, background scenery, suddenly stands out as un-cool? And the fact that you never noticed it before, just accepted it as part of you, your life, your family culture, seems to make it worse: if I never noticed how nerdy my tube-socks are, that means that they are part of me! I am like them!

                I’m trying to think of when, in my life, was the moment when I started not caring about this kind of thing. Once I was married? No, I remember looking around at the other young wives, trying not to look homely, trying to be part of the cool group in the student ward. Young motherhood, since it really was a series of day-long efforts to just make it ‘til bedtime? No, no—remember all the peer pressure (real or imagined) to nurse my babies, feed them the right snacks, get them potty-trained? I do remember a time of consciously letting go of embarrassment that my children showed up at church in hand-me-downs. (A pair of very girlish pink rainboots served each of my boys in turn when they were 3.) I am lucky that my boys didn’t complain about hand-me-downs, even as teenagers. The aspects of our own family culture that make them writhe must be something else. Or they’ve hidden it well. They’ve done a good job of hiding from me what it is that has made them embarrassed about coming from our home, and for that I’m grateful.

                Reading my student’s essay tugged at my heart for him. Here he is, a single BYU student, just old enough to begin working through who he is because of where he has come from, and who he might want to be. I wanted to put my arm around him and say, “Stand up for your tube socks; don’t be ashamed of coming from a large family who put their money elsewhere instead of fancy socks. Trust me: you’ll meet a girl who comes from a tube-sock family, too, and you will raise your children on tubesocks, and be perfectly happy.” I wanted to tell him how happy it makes me to see families with little kids in mismatched clothes and messy hair. Girls in batman pajama capes at 2 p.m. in the grocery store. Skip over the angst and right into the love of the real, dear student.

                But it’s a nice fantasy to say that I’ve grown into appreciation of what matters and away from immature worry about what doesn’t. The fact is, I’m mostly just tired, conserving resources, and I still have my petty things. The wrinkles around my eyes that drive me batty, for example. Self-consciousness about telling people I write poetry—both among the people who don’t read it or see its value, and among the people who are much better at it than I. I still have my stupid tube-sock issues.

                I guess that the thing I really gained from reading my student’s essay is a little compassion for my young self, and my old self. Keep pushing against the world, girl. Seize all the joy you’ve got coming.