Pablo Neruda's Socks and Me

Walking into the English class where I would be subbing, I quickly checked the lesson plan. “Read with the class ‘Ode to My Socks’ and discuss.” Finding the page in the textbook, I saw that the poet was Pablo Neruda, a Chilean, very important (what makes a poet “important”?). I’d heard of him but never read anything written by him.

How could he have known, when he wrote, that he was telling my story?

The narrator, I’ll call him Bob, receives a gift of colorful, woolen, handmade socks from a neighbor woman. Bob is poor, probably lives in Chile, probably has never worn socks because they are a luxury he can’t afford. The woman is also poor in money but is a shepherdess rich in knitting skills. The socks are her way to say “thanks” for some favor he has done her.

Bob is overwhelmed by the gift. They are colorful and soft. His feet are unworthy to wear them. Still, he carefully, slowly, deliberately smooths them on over his calloused, lowly feet. Neruda shows us how grateful and undeserving Bob feels, now that his feet have been transformed into two long, shining, heavenly “fish.”

Bob felt about those socks the same way I felt when, just one day earlier, I also received a gift of handknitted socks.

My friend Elaine knitted them during this winter’s long, cold, Colorado evenings by the fire, and sent them to me in thanks for a very small thing I had done for her. The yarn is wool from well-loved sheep, along with soy fiber and a touch of fiber from shrimp and crab shells. How special is that!?! Are you as amazed as I was/am? Has anyone ever knitted socks for you?

I felt like Bob, that the socks should be hung on display on my wall, but instead, I slowly slipped them onto my unworthy feet and was transformed into the Queen of Socked People!

When I tried to explain to the tenth graders how it was, they paid attention, they smiled, even laughed, but they couldn’t understand how deeply Bob and I felt about our socks. Maybe someday they will get or give such a gift and then they will know.

Isn’t that what education is about? A touch, a sound, a word that stays hidden inside you until one day something happens that trips the switch in your memory? Instantly you remember, and it’s not strange anymore – like the day when the substitute teacher told them about socks and gifts of love.

What does this story have to do with my trip to France? I long to find room in my stuffed backpack to take the socks with me and show them to everyone we meet there. Show people that my friend spent her evenings knitting these marvels of rainbow colors for my insignificant feet. I want them to know that some people in America still knit by firelight on winter evenings, surrounded by two dogs and a cat.

Then they will know that America is full of odds and ends that don’t get talked about but that are part of what makes up the better part of us.