Poetry by Lana Hechtman Ayers
Whenever I asked my father
What do you want for your birthday?
he said socks, for Father’s day, socks,
for Chanukah, socks.
The man only had two feet.
What did he need with so many pairs?
One of them always wears thin before the other, he said,
gets a hole at the big toe.
Being a kid with not much money, only the gelt
grandma snuck in my pockets when mother wasn’t looking,
socks fit what I could afford and always fit my father’s feet.
There weren’t many choices back then
just the standard dark drab colors and white tennis socks,
or the fancy argyles men like the dads of my friends wore,
men who dressed in suits for work, not coveralls.
I always settled for navy or charcoal or black
but wondered why not a rainbow or glow in the dark?
Daddy always acted surprised when he opened my gift,
poorly wrapped lumps that I poured my heart into
and globed way too much scotch tape onto.
Just what I wanted, he’d say tearing open with gusto,
holding up the pair of socks like he’d just won an award,
which I wish I actually had given him—
for staying by my side whenever I was sick in bed,
for teaching me how to play all kinds of poker and rummy,
for letting me watch as he worked wood in the basement
to build shelves or repair constant rot around our house.
I don’t know whether there’s a heaven
or if my dad’s back on earth now,
like the psychic told me,
a person in their 30s I may never meet or not know I have.
Whenever I do the laundry sometimes a sock disappears.
I like to think that’s my dad, from out in the cosmos
grabbing one sock at a time so his big toe
doesn’t have to wiggle through the hole
in the Milky Way and be cold.
Some days. the pairs of socks come out even.
Those are the days I miss Daddy the most.
Lana Hechtman Ayers shepherded over 150 poetry titles into print as managing editor of 3 presses. Visit her online at LanaAyers.com. From her home in Oregon on clear, quiet nights she can hear the Pacific ocean whispering to the moon.
