Don’t Judge a Fox by Its Socks
Somewhere between Basel and Strasbourg, on board the MS Grace for a vegan river cruise along the Rhine, I tried not to stare at a woman’s sweatshirt.
Our ship was drifting through the quiet hush of early autumn, and I was still learning the rhythms of ship life: which corners offered the best views, where the introverts tucked themselves away, and how early one had to appear for breakfast to snag one of the elusive chocolate croissants.
The sweatshirt I was avoiding was oversized and black. It had a fox on the front, though fox feels too small a word. This one was made of flames. A flaming fox. A phoenix-fox. A creature that might rise from ashes and then ask you pointedly if you’re doing enough for the animals. It looked angry.
But it wasn’t just the sweatshirt.
The woman wearing it seemed armed for battle in some way. Her asymmetrical mohawk was fox-red and curly on top. Her aviator glasses caught the dull morning light. The whole ensemble had a kind of punk-rock authority that made me instinctively sit up straighter, like she might ask why I wore leather shoes, even if they were thrifted.
More than any of that, though, my mind, ever eager to interpret, whispered:
She won’t like me.
Not because I was hiding a stash of cheese in my suitcase—I wasn’t—but because my activism is decidedly gentle. I’m more “make vegan muffins for the new neighbor” than “dress as a fox and march outside Louis Vuitton.”
But here’s the thing: that was just the cover I read when I first saw her, not the story inside.
In folklore, foxes are tricksters, shapeshifters who slip between worlds and whisper, Look again. You’re missing something.
And Marleen, as it turned out, was made of fox magic.
It was Lorna and Shelley who ushered me toward the moment my assumptions began their quiet unraveling. You may remember them from an earlier story—new friends who made my solo journey feel less solo. That afternoon, they waved to someone across the lounge.
“You have to meet the Belgians,” they said, pulling two chairs closer to our table where we were lingering over cake and coffee.
As Marleen and her mother, Magda, approached, I braced for, I’m not sure. Judgment? A purity exam? A fiery fox spirit who could scan my aura for insufficient activism?
Instead, within seconds, my internal story dissolved like sugar in hot espresso.
Marleen was unexpectedly, disarmingly sunshine.
Warm and open. Curious. Quick to laugh and quicker to listen. The kind of person who leans in when you talk and mirrors your smile like she’s genuinely delighted to meet you.
She still had fire in her, of course.
She is angry about fox fur.
Angry about animal testing.
She attends protests dressed as a fox.
She has literally sat inside a cage to illustrate cruelty.
But none of that closed her off. The fierceness didn’t erase the softness. They lived together, like two foxes curled in the same den, one aflame, one whimsical.
The flaming fox sweatshirt may have been her armor, but the fox earrings, fox rings, and fox socks I noticed later were her heart.
And then there was Magda.
If Marleen was the fox with her tail on fire, Magda was the fox who curls at your feet and waits for you to tell your secrets. Short, silver hair. Slightly crooked glasses. Blouses with bows at the neck that are always askew and unraveled. She is angles and warmth in equal measure. Very “beloved middle-school teacher who doesn’t realize she’s iconic.”
My first impression of her read: Sweet. Soft. Quiet. Possibly smells of plant-based chocolate chip cookies and baked bread.
A French toast demonstration would cure me of my too-simplistic assumptions.
Magda sat next to me in the lounge as we watched a very handsome French chef—tall, confident, slicing fruit with the ease of a magician—prepare vegan French toast, a delicacy not readily available to most of us. The room smelled of toasted bread and caramelized sugar. We were all dreamily transfixed, composing internal odes to maple syrup.
Then Magda—quiet, gentle Magda—leaned toward me and, in a bright voice that carried across the room, asked:
“Is he married?”
Heads swiveled.
Someone giggled.
Somewhere by the window, the chef’s fiancée nearly spat out her sip of wine.
Magda beamed.
“I’d like to take him home,” she added. “He probably does the dishes, too!”
This was not chocolate-chip-cookie energy.
This was fox energy.
Silver-fox energy.
And she wasn’t done.
That evening, the ship’s musician began playing soft cocktail-lounge music. Normally, that’s my cue to exhale, to tuck myself into a chair and let my introverted wiring power down for the day.
But Magda sprang upright like someone had announced free puppy kisses in the lobby.
“Is it time to dance?” she whispered to Marleen, eyes sparkling.
Then came the bouncing.
The eager shimmying.
The full-body wiggles of anticipation.
Marleen practically sprinted to the musician to request anything with a beat. And when the music finally shifted, they took the floor like a two-woman carnival. They spun, twirled, moved with unguarded joy.
Watching them, something in me softened. A loosening of the knots I didn’t know I’d tied around my earliest impressions.
Because once you’re wrong about one person in such a spectacular way, you start wondering how many others you’ve only half seen.
Foxes, according to folklore, appear when you need a shift in perspective. They tug you gently, and sometimes not so gently, out of your certainty. They lead you toward truths you weren’t planning to find.
And after meeting the Belgians, foxes began following me.
I saw them everywhere.
On shop signs in tiny villages along the Rhine.
On felted Christmas ornaments in a German kitchen store.
As ceramic salt-and-pepper shakers in a vintage shop in the Netherlands.
Even the fox t-shirt I’d randomly packed took on new meaning. I wore it one morning and made a point to show it to Marleen. She beamed.
Foxes weren’t just decor anymore. They were reminders. Little spirit flags fluttering at the edges of my awareness, whispering:
See? You can be wrong. You can be surprised. You can open wider.
And then another fox turned up, right on cue.
After a week of dancing Belgians and flaming sweatshirts and trickster lessons, I walked into my apartment in Seattle and found a small box waiting in the mail pile. A gift from a friend.
Inside was a handmade crocheted fox bookmark.
Soft orange yarn.
A tiny embroidered face.
A long tail trailing behind it like a story you haven’t finished reading yet.
I held it and laughed.
Of course, it was a fox.
Of course, it arrived then.
Of course, the universe wasn’t done.
The fox looked up at me, as much as a yarn fox can, and if it could speak, I’m certain it would’ve said:
Don’t forget this.
And I won’t.
Because I nearly missed a vibrant, extraordinary human being—two of them—by trusting my first impression. By judging the flaming fox instead of the woman wearing it. By assuming I knew the story before I even opened the book.
The clever fox wouldn’t let me stay there.
So now, when I think back on that week on the Rhine, I remember the dancing, the French toast, the fox socks. But mostly, I remember the shift. The opening. The reminder that the world is full of people waiting to surprise us, soften us, deepen us.
People who are so much more than the stories we write about them at first glance.
People like the Belgians.
And of course, now, if a fox crosses my path, I pay attention. This feels like the right lesson to carry into the new year: soften the gaze, look again, stay open.
