small pajamas

It seems so silly, really.

They’re just pajamas. They’re that fleecy kind children love in the winter. This particular pair are blue and have a baseball player on them and the word “slugger” across the chest.

I bought them five years ago, right before we moved to Nashville.

Boy 1 wore them our first winter there. They were a little big on him; I remember how the legs of the pants sort of pooled at his feet when he climbed the stairs to bed.

Boy 2 wore them the next two years. My cozy-loving child, he would have lived in those pajamas if we had let him.

They have belonged to Boy 3 now for two winters. He likes them so much he has worn them all summer, too.

I’m not sure they will fit him once winter comes in a couple of months.

These are the kinds of things that break a mama’s heart: pacifiers no one wants any longer, wooden trains that are forgotten in toy buckets, and pajamas that are suddenly too small after being worn in your home for five winters.

But there they are, all folded on the sofa.

The thought of giving them to Goodwill is too depressing. How could you let a stranger wear these precious tattered frocks that are full of memories?

Passing them to someone you know is even worse. They will never understand what they mean to you, and even worse, you will have to endure seeing photos of your friends’ children wearing them on Facebook.

You could always pack them away in a box marked “for the grandbabies”. But it is possible that a box full of old pajamas might forever ruin your relationship with your future daughter-in-law.

Framing them would be laughable.

Cutting them up and making a quilt is too much work.

Using them to clean up spilled grease in the garage would feel like a true Shakespearean tragedy.

This is not in the parenting books.

No one tells you how to say goodbye to all the “little boy” things when the last little boy outgrows them.

But then the overgrown boys come in, with their crooked grins and laughing eyes.

They eat ten times their weight in peanut butter and potato chip sandwiches.

They tell you about the book they read yesterday and fight over who will have the largest piece of cake.

Then they run back outside to have an Airsoft battle, and you are completely smitten with them and  can barely remember what was so superior about them when they were littler.

You pick up the pajamas and stick them in the Goodwill pile.

After all, they’re just pajamas. Besides, you have lunch dishes to clean up and Airsoft troops to support….