IN MOVIES, WHEN THE MEDIEVAL CASTLE is stormed in the middle of the night by a rebel faction, the king and queen are always wearing long, white bedgowns. This is probably because having kings and queens leap out of bed naked (yet historically accurate) isn’t integral to the plot.
The first Christmas after I was married, my mother gave me, among other gifts, a set of flannel pajamas. I took them out of the box. The flannel was cream-colored, printed with pineapples, coconuts, and bananas. My first thought was not about how “me” they were (which they were). My first thought was, It’s the first Christmas after I just got married — what am I supposed to do with pajamas?
But, eventually, you do find yourself in tropical fruit sleepwear.
This Christmas, (my seventh married Christmas), I will wake up in the guest bedroom at my mother’s house in brown cotton pjs printed with sushi. I found them at a boutique on Main Street. They were hanging in the shop’s window for a month, and every time I walked past that window, the pajamas made the corners of my mouth turn up. But then, one day, replaced by jeans that promised to simulate a tummy-tuck, the pajamas were gone. Why hadn’t I just gotten them the first time I saw them? Or the fourth? I had figured the pajamas would lose their effect. I had figured that one day I would walk by that window, and not even notice the sushi pajamas. But not seeing them made me the same kind of sad I felt freshman year of high school when my favorite TV show was canceled. Those pajamas understood me.
“You didn’t sell out of the sushi pajamas you had hanging in the window?” I asked inside. Oh no, the saleswoman told me.
There were two left. I had already made up my mind to buy a pair when I looked at the price tag. The average Nicaraguan could live for 40 days on the amount of money necessary to buy these pajamas.
I never know what to get my mother — the proverbial “woman who has everything” — for Christmas. A couple of years ago, I bought her and my step-dad livestock: Goats, bunnies, bees. (Are bees considered livestock?) I didn’t put the animals under the tree with red bows tied around their necks. (Do bees have necks?) I donated money to a nonprofit organization that gives livestock to people in third world countries, and gave my mother and step-dad cards I had printed off the organization’s website. Now, the organization keeps sending me pamphlets and personalized address labels and gratitude for my commitment to ending world hunger.
Last year, research firm IMS Health found that Americans spent more than $20 billion on sleep accessories and extras. We (not me — I’m not sure who this “we” is) bought white noise machines and cashmere pajamas. This doesn’t include the $3 billion we (still not me) spent on prescription sleep drugs. According to the National Institutes of Health, one-third of us have some kind of sleep disorder. (Does one’s snoring husband count as a sleep disorder?) The Center for the Advancement of Health disagrees with NIH, claiming that the number of people with legitimate sleep problems is much lower than one-third, and that, essentially, Americans are a bunch of hypochondriacs.
Sleepless about not being able to sleep? In New York, “corporate wellness center” Yelo charges the low-low price of $12 for you to come in a take a 20-minute nap. The average Nicaraguan could live for a week on $12.
This Christmas Eve, I intend to nestle all snug in my sushi pajamas, and let visions of sugar plums stage a krumping battle with the livestock and naked royals.
MARIEL HOWSEPIAN digs black coffee, fairy tales and a man in coveralls. She lives in Santa Monica and
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 21, 2007. Read the original PDF.