Pajama Day
This August, in celebration of teachers everywhere who are decorating their rooms, planning their lessons, and readying their hearts, I will be sharing some excerpts from my book, Rooted to Rise. Everybody has a teacher—or two or twelve or twenty—who changed her life. I hope reading about a few of mine will remind you of yours.
If it does, let them know how thankful you are for the roots.
WHEN LITTLE PEOPLE GO TO big schools, it can be scary. Mostly for a little person’s mom. When I took my firstborn to his first day of school, I recorded a grand video of his timid entrance on my Channel 5-sized video camera. I can close my eyes still and see his pensive face resting in his hand at his desk as he seemed to be taking stock of the whole wide world he’d entered and all the new people in it.
When I took my daughter four years later, it was different. She didn’t want me tagging along, much less capturing video. “You are not going in with me,” she announced when we pulled into the school parking lot. As a result, I have no video and no pictures of her historic day.
He wasn’t sure about the world; she had already decided she owned it. Imagine being the kindergarten teacher standing in front of sixteen souls as widely different as my two on their first days of school.
We act like a teacher’s job is to hold a goal post and bark out plays so that miniature people in progress can move the ball down the field—and I guess part of it is. But not all of it. Not even most of it, if we’re really talking real. You can’t write down what a teacher does any more than you can measure her by what her students do or do not do. Her job is so much bigger than that. A teacher’s job is to tread water while juggling bowling pins and balancing a plate on her head in the middle of drawing geometry on the board with her toes. She’s always in the water—on the clock or not—trained to be on high alert for moments when she can save or make a life. For a teacher, there’s rarely a shore in sight.
My son’s kindergarten teacher was a jolly Lilliputian who talked crazy fast and with her hands. She herded kids with giggles and celebrated them with smiles. It would be so easy to miss her brilliance. Her classroom, like most kindergarten workshops, oozed with interesting stuff. Kid creations. Learning tools. Wiggly, sweaty, wormy little humans. Mrs. Etter’s room was a petri dish. From the ones bouncing off the walls to the ones sitting in the corner—and my son, who was somewhere in between—she had the pulse of it all, which she carried, gently, in the palm of her hand.
One nondescript day deep into the fall of my son’s first year, I came home from work to discover that tomorrow was Pajama Day at school. Mrs. Etter had told them so, and Colton was juiced. As we got ready to read a story before bed, he laid out his favorite pair of PJs, excited as could be about whatever kind of magic tomorrow surely held.
My stomach itched.
I felt like I should have seen this coming. I prided myself on being so in tune. How had I missed such an important rite of passage as a theme day in my son’s first semester of his first year of school?
Mortified isn’t too strong of a word (young mothers exist in extremes) for the way I felt. So after I tucked him in, I went straight to our Thursday Folder, the place where all things pertaining to school came home with kids on a weekly basis. I unfolded every paper. I read all the smallest print. I found nothing anywhere about Pajama Day.
The next morning Colt bounced in for breakfast dressed in Spider Man and ready to seize the day. I asked him if he was sure today was the day. I told him I hadn’t found anything about Pajama Day in the Thursday folder. I asked again why he was so convinced.
“Because Mrs. Etter said,” he said.
And that was that.
So we loaded up for school, me feeling like a disengaged and inattentive mom. (How do you not know about Pajama Day? How do you not participate in the build up? Maybe go together to buy a cool pair of PJs, make a plan for a get-up that’s cooler than cool?) Apparently, in my busy-working-mom-life, I had missed Pajama Day. Translation: I sucked.
Through the cloud of guilt I drove, ultimately pulling into the drop-off line that snaked around the parking lot at the school. As we inched along, it occurred to me that none of the kids slamming car doors and running to the building had on PJs. About three cars back from the front, I asked Colton, my heart so tender in that spot still, “Are you sure it’s Pajama Day?” He was undaunted. “It’s Pajama Day, Mom. Mrs. Etter said.”
And so I kissed him, told him to have a great day, and convinced myself it was a kindergarten thing, not a school-wide thing. Then I drove away like a turtle, terrified I’d just let my son walk off a cliff with no wings. I couldn’t shake the dome of dread. His little five-year-old heart had only a few scabs and even fewer scars. If this turned out the way I feared it might, this one might leave a mark.
I kept waiting for a call from the school all morning long. I imagined getting it, rushing home to get regular clothes, and running them to the school in a bag. I could fix it. I could save him. I knew I could. But the call never came.
By the time noon rolled around (release time for half-day kindergarten), I was breathless with anticipation. I couldn’t wait to hear about the day. Unfortunately, as I inched my way through the pick-up line, I realized my gut had been right all along. It wasn’t a kindergarten thing. No other five-year-olds were coming to their parents’ cars with their backpacks and lunchboxes and pajamas on. No one. Not one child. My heart was on the floorboard.
Retrieved from https://lwlies.com/
As I pulled up to the pick-up spot, Mrs. Etter came walking toward the car with Colton, he in Spider-Man and she in bunny slippers. He climbed in as undaunted as he’d climbed out four long hours ago. She was smiling her everyday grin.
“Was it Pajama Day?” I asked.
“It was,” she said. “Colton is such a great listener. I reminded everyone yesterday and he was the only one who paid close enough attention to catch it. So he was our superhero leader today. You should be so proud of him! I know I sure am.”
We exchanged smiles, heaped on a bit more praise, and I roughed up his hair. With a quick wave, we pulled away.
Mrs. Etter called me later. She said she had announced Pajama Day the day before and urged everyone to be sure and join in. She later realized she had confused her days, jumped a week ahead, and gave a directive that wasn’t true. Most kids aren’t listening at the end of the day anyway, so it didn’t cross her mind again—until Spider-Man walked in the room that morning.
Mrs. Etter had a moment to throw a lifeline.
And she did.
She got her bunny slippers out of the closet and crowned Colton king for the day, so instead of a goat, a hero was made. Oh, the little big things teachers do.
Mrs. Etter apologized profusely, though I refused to take it. I told her this would be what I’d remember long after the schooling was done. Then I sniffled gratitude for this brilliant tiny woman who could pivot on a dime to steer a life, and did.