The Fruit Socks
I bought them because my feet were wet. That is the exact reason they carry more than any souvenir could.
Morning. Riga. I am getting ready for work.
I open the sock drawer and immediately see them. Four pairs, each with a different fruit. Peach, watermelon, pineapple, lime. My hand moves before I have decided anything.
And then I am back on a boat. Off the coast of Madeira. My younger son standing next to me. He was four years old.
We had gone to see dolphins.
When we found them, they came close. Right up to the bow. Swimming alongside, jumping in front. We stood there watching and I could not believe it was happening. I was nearly forty years old. I had never seen a dolphin in the wild. Not once.
Then one wave came wrong.
The boat dropped, the next wave was already there, and it hit us. Water above the knee. Wet socks, wet shoes, wet everything. Some people were laughing. I was happy anyway, because this was exactly the kind of day I had waited a long time for.
We went ashore. Walked into a shopping centre. I bought socks because I needed socks.
I did not choose them carefully. They had fruit on them. Four pairs. That was enough.
It was a Tuesday morning in Riga. I had a full day ahead. And for a few seconds, standing at the drawer with those socks in my hand, I was completely somewhere else.
Not thinking about Madeira. There. The whole day, all at once.
That does not happen often. And it did not happen because I planned for it.
These are not souvenir socks.
No one designed them to carry memory. I did not buy them with that in mind. I bought them because my feet were wet and these were the ones on the shelf.
The souvenirs I bought on that trip are sitting somewhere. Nice things, chosen thoughtfully. They do not produce the same effect.
I did not buy these socks to remember that day. Maybe that is exactly why they work.
The same thing happens with how I remember projects. People. Colleagues. Not the reports, not the formal record. Something else that was never meant to be kept.
The fruit socks were not a choice about memory. They were a choice about dry feet.
Which is why, on an ordinary morning in Riga, they can send me straight back to the Atlantic Ocean.