Friendship

I am wearing pajama bottoms that I bought maybe 8 years ago when visiting in the wintertime a friend who lived in Massachusetts. Coming from Texas, I was woefully unprepared for a drafty turn-of-the-century New England house in the winter, with its temperamental and inadequate pipes.

So when I was wandering around the kind of downtown people call "quaint," I popped into the Gap to find a pair of warmish pj's. The only ones on sale were a salmon-colored set, with cropped pants edged in lace. I got them, and wore them, and was almost warm (but the cold came not from an external source).

I've kept them all these years but had lost track of them under a pile of concert tees and ragged skirts in the Boy's dresser (I appropriated a couple of his drawers). I rediscovered them yesterday after he finally cleared out the space in front of the dresser so that I could actually pull out the drawers.

It feels really good to wear these old, worn-in pj's. I don't have a lot of outside clothes that are that old. I guess something about pj's don't garner your attention, so that the years pass by without you really noticing how the holes have developed, the threads unraveled, or the elastic stretched.

And then, 8 years later, they reappear almost like an old friend.

I've since lost that connection to the friend I visited in MA. In fact, he doesn't even live in the state anymore. He has moved south, to where it's warmer and you probably don't need pj's.