This morning, my Facebook feed was full of photos of Swedes wearing colorful mismatched socks. That’s on a day when I had planned to blog about some fun colorful socks I recently found in a Swedish gift shop. What’s going on? To honor her older sister with Down’s syndrome, and to celebrate that difference is good, 10-year-old Nathea Anemyr had called for everyone in Sweden to rock their socks today, i.e. wear mismatched colorful socks. Many of my friends and others, even the ministers of the Swedish government, showed off their colorful mix of socks.
Even the police horses in my home town, Lund, rocked their socks today!
Some more digging reveals that March 21st is the UN World Down Syndrome Day which involves wearing fun socks to get people talking. So today, I mismatched my new socks for Nathea and Noelle and to celebrate the beauty of us all being different. Tomorrow, I will wear the other mismatched pair to trigger conversations about Down’s syndrome.
As I mentioned, I found the socks at the Swedish Gift store “The Gift Basket” in Geneva, IL, and they are all made by Ozone. One of the sock designs is inspired by the Swedish Dala Horse and the other one reminds me of embroidery that my mother made in the 70’s and 80’s from Swedish “Hemslöjden”. The striped ones are called “Scandinavian Stripes”.
My kids wear mismatched socks every day. Even for band concerts, when black socks are required, do they manage to find two different black socks. I buy big stacks of similar socks with harmonized color schemes, so the mismatch does not get totally out of control… 😉 When I hear other moms complaining about unmatched socks gathering in their laundry room, I realize how lucky I am that my kids embrace being different every single day!
Rock the socks and have a wonderful weekend!
Elisabeth