Naps

letting sleeping dogs lie
Originally uploaded by dogfaceboy.

I'm a little jealous of nappers--those drop-of-a-hat sleepers who can summon the restorative powers of 20 minutes of shut eye. My husband is one of them. One his head is on the pillow, his forearm draped across his forehead, It only takes seconds for the snoring to begin, and when I jab him in the arm with my elbow, he insists he couldn't have been snoring because he wasn't even asleep yet.

The man naps almost every day. Sometimes he's down for as little as fifteen minutes; others, like today, he's out for two hours. At those times, he awakens with a bowling ball on his shoulders and needs a cup of coffee to get him back up.

This morning, he awoke at 4:45 A.M. to find school cancelled, so he walked the dogs in the park at sunrise. He finished a book, drank coffee, prepared breakfast for his daughter, then took her sleigh riding--about twenty times down the big hill.

By noon, he was asleep, and at 2:00, he was headed out the door for fish food and library books and videos. Soon, he'll walk the dogs, we'll have dinner, and then we'll drive to Annapolis to see Bob Schneider. (Truth be told, he's not looking forward to this trip. A, it's a school night. And B, he knows I think Bob is hot, and we are sitting in the front.)

By 9:00, Marty will be ready to party. I, on the other hand, will be watching Bob but secretly longing for a hot bath (which, I suppose, is no worse than sitting in a hot bath while longing for Bob).

I was never a napper. In the pre-insomnia days, I was too busy to spend a moment more than necessary sleeping. When I stopped sleeping, though, naps began to signify something. Rather than ruin my sleep that night, a nap restored my confidence in my ability to do the most basic of things. It meant I could sleep that night.

Lately, sleep's not so elusive, and naps are not so unattractive. As recently as last week I fell asleep in my daughter's bed while she read to me.

As I write this, I become sleepier and sleepier. Even talking about a nap is hypnotic. But if I go up there now, to the peaceful green room with my fluffy black opiate named Cleo, I will think about sleep, I will try too hard, I will become frustrated. I'll plug my ears to drown out the ticking clocks, and I'll close my eyes again, and twenty minutes later--twenty full minutes later--I may begin to snooze.

But by then, it will be time to go meet jingy.