Diabetics are told to be especially careful of their feet. They should never go barefoot, they should wear thick socks but not tight ones, they should inspect their feet daily.

I can't do that. My right hip has limited range of motion, and I can touch my right foot with either hand but not both hands at once. That doesn't make it impossible to put on socks, but I have to be lying in bed to do it, and it takes about an hour of extreme frustration to get my right sock on. The tax on my time is bad, but the tax on my tolerance is, well, intolerable. Diabetics tend to be fractious anyway, and by the time I get my socks on, I'm ready to head for a gun shop and buy a Sig Sauer to blow away anyone who looks at me cross-eyed.

Last week, I developed a disturbing sore on the thumb of my left foot. I confess to being a little paranoid about my feet. Is this it? Is amputation next? But the doc said it was just a blood blister, caused by not wearing socks under my leather shoes.

Socks Are A Bane

It seems like socks have always been a bane. Dad's side of the family runs to rather thick toenails, and regular toenail clippers don't work very well. Nail files work just fine, but teaching little boys to file their nails is not something you necessarily want to spend a lot of time on, not if you are raising enough kids to form an athletic team.

So you can imagine what long, thick toe nails do to socks, especially when little boys don't keep their shoes tightly laced, or they play in stocking feet. especially with the socks available years ago, before modern fibers were available. We considered a pair of socks to be in A-1 condition if there were only holes in the toe end. Everyday socks had holes at the achille's tendon; if there was no hole visible to onlookers, the socks were to be saved for Sunday.

I read in books about darning socks, and I asked Mama what that meant. She told me that it was meant sewing the holes shut. Once in while, Mama would open up the sewing machine and sew shut a hole in socks, not very comfortable, but it made the brood look a little less unpresentable at church.

Drat That Darning!

Terry O'Dell mentioned this morning that her mother never darned socks either, and declined to teach her how to do it. You never get it even, her mother said, and it causes a blister. Just throw the sock away.

That made me think not only of my mother, but of a story I read some years ago. Some guy was always complaining about never being able to find a matching pair of socks when he was getting dressed. When I win the lottery, he was always saying, I'm going to buy a sock factory, he claimed, so I can wear a new pair of socks every day. For his birthday, his friends and family got together and gave him 365 pairs of socks, so for a year, he could do exactly that. He didn't consider it a joke; he thought himself incredibly blessed, and I'd have to agree.

Mix Cake, No Frosting

Both Blondie and my late first wife, Em, were flabberghasted to find that my favorite cake is a chocolate mix cake, baked in a 9x13x2 pan, without frosting. Doesn't it dry out, they each asked, and I said yes, but I like it even when it gets a little crunchy.

My sister laughed when Em asked her about that. I had always assumed that it was because Mama didn't care for pie that we always ate cake instead. "No," she laughed, "it's because pie is a lot harder to teach a little boy to make right. There are a lot of steps, and you have to keep a close eye in the oven or the crust gets too dark."

Come to think of it, once all the kids left home, Mama was more likely to have pie around - and when she had cake, it was always frosted. When we were at home, she always assigned one of us kids to making cake, often the youngest ones. The only real trick to making a mix cake is not to mix it too much, and given the attention span of a little boy, there's little danger of that.

Teaching Boys To Cook

Strangers were always surprised to find out how much cooking my brothers and I were doing. It was only when I had a son that I found out that having your kids do cooking is not much of a labor-saving strategy. Mom always had insisted that it was because she was lazy, a bad mother with a big family, but my older sister said it started after a neighboring family lost the mother of the family. The father and sons had a terrible time at mealtime, because none of them knew how to cook. Mama decided that was never going to happen to her sons and grandkids.

I can't say I always enjoyed the experience. There were times when I was in the middle of a book, and I didn't want to put it down to make acorn squash and sausage for supper. Mind you, I never hated cooking; it was simply an interruption of something I'd rather be doing. It wasn't like doing dishes. Boy, I'd even practice my piano lessons to get out of washing dishes. I enjoyed cooking, even when it came to peeling vegetables. Canning tomatoes wasn't a real joy, being hot and steamy work on the hottest days of the year; a boy thinks he ought to be swimming instead. But there's the joy of creating something - and something good to eat when you're done, besides.

Raising Jasper

I suppose that's why I took the effort to teach Jasper to cook. It wasn't easy. Em fought me every step of the way, because her style of cooking was entirely different than mine; I think in terms of skillet casseroles, and she thought in terms of meat, potato, vegetable, as separate dishes. She thought I was ruining Jasper. She didn't like me in the kitchen at all, except when it came to doing dishes; that was one thing she hated to do even more than I do. When I was cooking, I'd wash each item as I finished with it, so that I could avoid facing a big pile of dirty pots and pans, but she wouldn't even do that, and there were times when I would go into the kitchen and see two days of dishes to be washed. And she had a dishwasher! But, of course, if you let food dry on stuff for two days, a dishwasher does a crappy job.

I never have a problem finding a pair of socks these days, and there's not a one that has a hole in it. And I derive great joy these days from cooking, much more so than even eating, and when it comes to enjoying good food, I take a bad seat to nobody. But I need to stop writing at this point, and head down to the kitchen. It's not Christmas cooking I have in mind. I want to slice some taters, and boil them, and toss in some crumbled hamburger and butter. Mmmm. And I'd make a mix cake - chocolate, of course - but there's not a cake mix in the house. They cause fights, because whenever I make one, Blondie insists on icing it, and then it just sits there, because I don't like frosted cake very much, and Blondie doesn't care much for cake at all.

Other Bloggers On Related Topics:
big families - cooking - diabetes - feet - mothers - pie - raising sons - range of motion - socks - stewed potatoes - widowers