Amy Lu's View

I’m not a Halloween enthusiast, but I do have vintage Halloween socks. 

I was going to call my socks “antique,” but Google says something has to be at least 100 years old to be an antique, and while these socks are old, they’ve only existed for about 25-30 years. So they don’t qualify as antiques, but Google does say an item merely needs to be 20-99 years old to be “vintage.”

I am the original and sole owner of these socks. While I don’t remember their exact origin story, my mom gave them to me, and as she died 24 years ago this October, and I think I had owned them for a while before she died, I know I’ve owned them for at least a quarter of century. 

There’s nothing terribly special or sentimental about these socks–I didn’t make a special effort to hang onto them after my mother’s death. It’s just rather random that I still have them (and a miracle that they’ve survived the clutches of StanLee, Evil Genius Sock Eater. It also seems miraculous that I still have both of them and haven’t lost one to the voracious appetite of the dryer deity). 

How do (cheap) socks survive so long? How is it possible that so many years have passed since my mom died? How have I gotten so much older? How have I lived so much of my life without her? How is it possible that she never got to snuggle and wrestle with StanLee, Destroyer of Socks?

A couple of weeks ago, Chad and I saw John Hiatt perform. He’s one of our favorite musicians, and it was a fantastic show. It was an especially emotional evening for us, as it was almost exactly 24 years ago when we did NOT see a John Hiatt concert because my mom was dying.  We had tickets to that show in 2000, and I agonized over whether or not I should drive back from Chippewa Falls to see it. My mom was clearly in her last days, but dying doesn’t usually follow a clear schedule. I wanted to be there for my mom’s death, but I also was (and still am) super cheap and didn’t want to waste the concert tickets (my mom would have appreciated that). 

My sister told me she didn’t think I should go to the concert, because I would regret it if our mom died while I was gone. She was right–my mom died the next afternoon, and I appreciate that I didn’t go to the concert and that I was able to be there. 

Now my sister is gone, too. But John Hiatt, and my Halloween socks, are still here. This all feels emotionally powerful, even though I can’t really say why. Perhaps it’s because time is feeling really compressed to me of late. The veil between the worlds is supposedly thin at Halloween. Maybe this includes the veil between past and present (I really felt this at the concert when John Hiatt surprised me by doing so many songs from his 2000 Crossing Muddy Waters album, from the tour we didn’t see). 

And of course, my mom, and my sister, and my dad, and all our beloved pets and friends and other family members who have left this mortal coil are still here when we remember them and tell stories about them. They’re here, although not in a tangible way like my socks. 

Maybe this time squishiness includes the future, too–I wouldn’t be surprised if my Halloween socks outlive all of us.