It’s almost Christmas, and Santa is making a list and checking it twice. And robes are on it.

Robes? I don’t own one. My father didn’t own one. He was a naval officer in my childhood and didn’t wear one at sea where he slept in his underwear or fully clothed in case of an alarm.

When he went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, as I do now, he went in his skivvies. No robe.

Growing up with four brothers, there were no robes or pajamas. They were navy guys like my father. No robes or pajamas for guys in our house. Period.

When I went to the movies, where I spent more time than I should have, I was already a obsessive-compulsive “observer.”

I would annoy my mother with whispered details. “Momma, why is he wearing a coat in the house?”

“It’s a robe,” she’d say.

I remember watching the old actors — William Powell, Cary Grant, Mickey Rooney and Lewis Stone — all movie males; when they appeared at bedtime or walked around the house, they’d be wearing robes.

Powell and Grant, for example, always wore fancy silk robes, and of all bazaar things, “Smoking Jackets.” I was gobsmacked.

For a year in the ’50s, in the two-bedroom New York apartment I shared with three other actors, only Billy Davenport wore a robe. It was his grandfather’s, he said. The rest of us watched the Yankees or Jack Paar in our underwear.

This part is a true story.

One day, I met She, a New England girl from a prominent family, whose father was a judge. This was an actress of great style and manners, clearly looking for a handsome bad Irish boy to discipline.

After a month or so of proper courting, and giving me cab fare each night at 1 or 2 in the morning, she offered me a huge rug in the corner of her upper East Side apartment, with a strict understanding.

She had a small bed. I had the rug, a huge lavender one in the corner, with an invisible line down the middle of the room that surely glowed in the dark.

“Here,” She said on the initial tour as she pointed out the closet. “This is where you can hang your clothes, and your robe.”

“I don’t have a robe.”

“You don’t have a robe? Everyone has a robe.”

“I don’t have a robe.”

“You’ll get one.”

She continued, as she pointed to two drawers in a large dresser.

“Here’s where you can put your shirts and pajamas.”

I swallowed hard. “I don’t have pajamas.”

“Everyone has pajamas.”

“I don’t have pajamas.”

“Well, you’re going to have pajamas if you’re going to share space with this girl.”

The next day she bought me what appeared to be a blue blanket.

I winced. “That’s a bunny suit.”

“It’s a one-piece pajama, and it zips up the front. It’ll keep you warm on the rug.”

“It’s a kid’s bunny suit.”

“Try it on.”

I tried it on.

She laughed. “You look darling.”

And so our 60-year adventure began with pajamas. And a robe.

I still don’t own pajamas or a robe. But it’s almost Christmas, and Santa is making his list, and checking it twice.

Anybody got a blue bunny suit, extra-extra-extra large?

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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