Every year in January my boys’ school has Pajama Day. It always seems to me that the other kids are fairly equally divided between wearing actual pajamas on Pajama Day (sometimes with bathrobes and slippers as well!), and just wearing comfortable clothes, which is what my boys usually wear to bed — usually a t-shirt and shorts or sweat pants. We do have pajama pants in several sizes, so for Pajama Day, my usual plan has been to send them in pajama pants and a t-shirt, which has always worked fine for all of my boys… except one.
This one boy has always had a heightened sense of “what everyone else is doing.” Since he was tiny, I’ve watched him watching his peers to see how they wear their baseball hats, whether they tuck their shirts in or not, and if they wear white socks or black socks when they’re playing basketball. It’s always pulled at my heartstrings to watch him carefully adjust some part of his outfit to better fit what he sees his friends doing. His observations aren’t foolproof—he tends to think everyone is doing something, even if it’s only a few people and just as many are doing something else—and I’ve had to talk him down many a time and assure him that whatever he was wearing and how he was wearing it was just fine. I’ve even pointed out other kids wearing the same things, in order to reassure him.
It’s not just clothing either — he’s put out every Christmas that we don’t deck the entire exterior of our house out in Christmas lights like “everyone else does” even though there’s no one in our neighborhood who does anything on the scale that he wants.
Pajama Day has always been one of those events for him. I think he was okay for his first Pajama Day, because he hadn’t yet seen what everyone else would wear, but he quickly determined that everyone wears matching pajama pants-and-shirt sets, which we didn’t have, and he was so embarrassed. Around that time (but after Pajama Day had already passed) we received a bag of hand-me-downs from a family who often passes on their older boys’ clothes, and there was a pajama set in it in his size, and he wore it around the house for days because he felt so cool that he finally had pajamas just like everyone else. We gave him pajama sets for his birthday, and even a pair of slippers, all in preparation for Pajama Day, and he was thrilled. I would have done the same for his brothers, but none of them cared enough to do so. The younger ones got to wear his pajamas as he outgrew them, but none of them got as excited about them.
This year, when Pajama Day was coming up, I panicked a little, because I’d totally forgotten to think about getting pajamas for my finicky boy and he’d outgrown the others. In fact, it was so last minute when I realized that I told him I was sorry, but he was going to have to wear pajama pants and a t-shirt this year. He said, “That’s fine.”
“That’s fine”?? And he really seemed fine. He wasn’t upset at all. What?
At first, I was so relieved that was his answer, and it made it all so much easier for me … but then I started thinking about how this is such a great example of him growing up. It was such a stress every year to make sure he had his pajamas, but now that that’s not something I need to worry about anymore I’m feeling really wistful. It’s like, this is what I’m been hoping for and working toward with so many conversations I’ve had with him over the years, and now that it’s happened, I’m wondering where that little boy went.
Is this a little taste of what the empty nest will be like? When all you’ve been preparing your kids for their whole growing up finally happens — they move out and become the contributing adults that they should be — and all you do is remember the little ones they used to be, when the days were so long and you didn’t get any sleep but the years flew by and you’d love to have them little again?
Today it’s pajamas, tomorrow it’s something else, I know. I do love watching my boys grow and mature, and I am glad that my boy doesn’t have to suffer anymore with his illusions of what’s required on Pajama Day. And spring is around the corner! Next time I write, it’ll be nearly St. Patrick’s Day. Time marches on, for better and for worse.
Kate and her husband have six sons ages 13, 11, 9, 7, 6, and 3. Follow her at www.facebook.com/kmtowne23, or email her at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
