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Wedding Socks:

An Anniversary

By Kristin WatersPublished 3 years ago 3 min read
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Image by wal_172619 from Pixabay

"It's our anniversary sweetheart! 32 years, can you believe it? What a milestone! I never thought we would get here. I know we usually do something special but I wanted to go through those boxes in the attic. Think I'll do that today. Okay with you?"

There was no response. Not that I expected one. That’s how it was.

I grabbed the chair we reserved for this task and stepped up to peek into the small crawlspace. It was dim and dusty, but I could see several old cardboard boxes waiting patiently to be taken down and the treasures inside to be rediscovered.

I snagged one marked 'Us' and pulled it towards me. It wasn't too heavy, but it was a bit bulky and I wished I had some help getting it down. Oh well. I snugged it up against my chest and eyed the space between me and the hard floor. Doable. I shifted my grip a little and stepped down. Unfortunately, I misjudged the distance by a hair and stumbled into the wall, creating the unmistakable thunk of an accident in progress.

"Everything's fine!" I called out in case there was any concern.

I carried the box to the living room and placed it on the floor in front of the couch. I flopped into my favorite spot and looked over at you.

"This is the one with all of our couple stuff in it. Should be fun to look through. Ready?"

I opened it up without waiting for a response and took a breath. Here it was, our life together. There were a few unframed prints on top that had been deemed not presentable by you but that I had still wanted copies of. I pulled one out. It was of you and I on our trip to Ireland. We were posing in our typical selfie fashion in front of a mossy stone post covered in what I had assumed were simply design markings but that you had assured me was an ancient language called Ogham. You had even tried to pull it up on Google to prove it but there hadn't been any data service. It didn't matter, I believed you anyway.

I flashed the picture to you, "Remember this? It was our first vacation in over a year. Oh God, it was so good to finally get out of the city! And Ireland was even better than I had imagined."

I smiled and placed it to the side. Flipping through the others laying there, I thought that they really should be framed and displayed. I resolved to do that this week, no matter what you thought. I separated the various other items one at a time.

There were receipts from some of our special anniversary dinners, ticket stubs from movies we had seen, pamphlets from the zoo with maps that you had marked with different colored highlighters to make sure we saw everything, and a single pair of commemorative programs from the time you had convinced me to go to the opera with you and your godmother. I snorted and shook my head as I studied it. There was a reason only one of those existed… or would ever exist.

After a while I had nearly made it to the bottom of the slips of paper with silly messages to each other, cards with sweet declarations of love, and stuffed animals that I couldn’t for the life of me remember why we had kept, when my fingers brushed over some familiar stiff fabric.

"Oh! I thought we had gotten rid of these!" I pulled out two pair of well-worn, wildly patterned, and obviously well-worn socks. They were mated together in a mish-mash of color and craziness. One pair was black with long-faded multicolored neon cats printed all over and the other had the same faded colors but in a much statelier stripes that circled the potential wearers leg and calf.

"Look honey, it's our wedding socks." I smiled and came over to where you were sitting near my desk.

"There is no way you can ignore this find. I still say we are the only ones that have wedding socks instead of gowns. I think these should go right here, right above you on this upper shelf. I don’t care if it looks weird. And I'm going to frame that picture from Ireland I like so much. I'll set it at an angle, so you won't have to see it. Whatcha' think? Yeah? Good. It's settled."

I smiled and reached out to stroke the engraved name plate attached to the base of the painstakingly hand-crafted wooden urn my father had made once it became clear nothing else could be done.

"Happy anniversary my love. I miss you."

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About the Creator

Kristin Waters

I write things. They might make you think, laugh, cry, or call that person you've been avoiding. That's a good thing. Come check out my author website and blog to see what you've been missing!

https://kewfiction.com

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