Napping

I debated about the title of this post, thinking that "Snoozing" sounded better than that abrupt little brat of a word, "nap."  Add an "s" and mix it up and you've got "snap," hardly a relaxing word.  "Nap" is quick and jarring; "snooze" is long and sleepy.  But as you can see, "Napping" won out, because, after all, we all know what it refers to:  that luxurious idea which usually comes to us first thing upon waking in the morning, "I think I'll take a nap later."  (The opposite of this kind of thinking would be Warren Zevon declaring "I'll sleep when I'm dead."  Well, Warren's dead now, but I'll bet you anything he is NOT napping.)

One of my earliest memories is of taking afternoon naps when I was four.  But I'm pretty sure I didn't actually sleep.  With my parents at work and my sister at school, I was left in the care of my beloved grandmother, my Nanny.  I would lie down on the bed in the spare room while she set up the ironing board nearby.  Because I loved her beyond measure, I would not have considered telling her that I didn't want to nap.  Instead, I would pretend to be asleep while listening to her recite her Hail Marys to some imaginary set of rosary beads while the iron plunked and slid over pillowcases and shirts.  Somehow that droning and gliding were comforting enough that I could manage to lie still long enough to satisfy a time requirement for a nap.  Or at least until the day's ironing was done.

In Kindergarten, we had to nap en masse.  Looking back, the fact that a Kindergarten "day" was only three hours long to begin with, and that we were expected to sleep during half an hour of it, makes me question the work ethic of Mrs. Goodrich, that sour old biddy who scared the bejesus out of us.  Napping for us meant putting our heads down on the hard, cold, wooden tabletops and closing our eyes.  That didn't prevent us from peeking and pointing at our neighbors and stifling giggles.  Nobody actually slept.  But heaven help you if Mrs. Goodrich caught you peeking or pointing or giggling!  Good little girl that I was, I was never publicly chastised for failing to nap.

And then naps disappeared for the rest of our public education, unless, of course, one was home sick with nothing to do but crawl into bed and try to keep the nasal passages clear long enough to catch a few winks.  College brought the return of The Nap, usually following an all-niter of cramming for an exam or writing a research paper in one sitting.  I do remember sleeping once for 22 hours straight.  I don't know if that qualifies as a "nap," but I do know that I felt like crap for days after.

As any parent knows, having children means the end of adult napping.  I have been known to say, on more than one occasion, "I haven't had a nap since 1985!"  Not exactly true, but close.

These days, the idea of napping occurs to me every winter morning.  It is a thought I flirt with until the caffeine kicks in and I'm good to go.  The truth is, I am a terrible sleeper, and if I napped during the day, I would have an even worse time falling asleep at night.  Nonetheless, I am eying the leather couch in front of the fire, listening to my iPod on Shuffle, and thinking how nice it might be later on to give in.  There's snow in the forecast again, and the words "had just settled down for a long winter's nap" are messing with me inside my head.  So maybe . . .

One thing I know for sure.  If I do take a nap later on today, I will be in love with it.