Naptime

For me, I think, one of the hardest things about becoming a mother was that I could not sleep when I was tired unless the baby was sleeping too.
This was just the truth and you know what I mean. This simple, most basic need- sleep- could not be fulfilled unless the baby was asleep and even then, I had to sleep with one ear open and usually at least one tit bared.

And this need for sleep has not left me as I have aged. I love to sleep. It is my drug and my joy and possibly my favorite activity. I don't even want to think about what this says about me. I admit it though, and take with it what you will. Depression? Escape? Luxurious enjoyment of one of life's greatest pleasures?

Hell. I don't know.

But I love it. I love getting my shower and lying down on my bed with the two fans blowing on me, the cotton sheets, the tiny dog's weight on my feet, the man lying next to me- it all adds up to settling down into the adventure of an eight-hour (at least! please!) stretch of dreams. My sleep is no longer interrupted by a baby's cry. I don't have to get up to change a diaper, to offer a breast, to snuggle back down to sleep. But I do wake at least every hour or so to wonder why it is I have woken and then to crave some water, to find myself flinging the covers off of me, to understand that yes, I am having yet another hot flash.

And so sleep is still precious to me. And I love to nap. I remember back when the babies were young and I would give anything, anything at all for a nap and how hard they were to negotiate and you would think that now I, at this point in my life where I have no children to pick up from school or tend to, I could get a nap.
It is not always that easy.
And mostly, it is okay. I push myself past that post-lunch fatigue and go on with it but sometimes...oh. Sometimes.

Jessie and I have established a bit of a routine here in the last weeks. She has been coming over to do clinicals in Jefferson County on Wednesday morning and she oftentimes drops by on her way home to Leon County. Now Jessie was always a good sleeper, even as a child, and she still loves to sleep. And so when she gets here on Wednesday afternoons, as she did today, we often spend an hour or so talking and going over the most recent events in our life and then both of us start talking about how much we want a nap.
This happened today, in fact.
And we discuss our possible naps as if they were shopping trips to Tiffany and we rationalize why we are so tired. We encourage each other, too.
"Why don't you just go upstairs and lay down, honey?" I ask her and she says, "You should take a nap. Why not?'

And then we do.

I go into my room and shut the doors and turn on the fan and I lie down and I read a few pages and I am asleep like the dead. I sleep so hard that when I wake up it takes me a few moments to know where I am. I get up and brush my teeth and wash my face and wander out to make a shot of espresso to drink over ice and then she gets up and we look at each other as if we have gotten away with something. As if we are embarrassed and yet completely cat-ate-the-canary pleased at the same time. We lick the cream off our lips and she begins to study and we talk about what she is studying and I look up stuff on the internet that she has questions about and tell her stories from my days in nursing school and say things like, "I can't believe I slept so long. I need to go out and plant those eggplants!"

And eventually, I do. And eventually, she stretches and comes out to the garden and I give her lettuce and then I get her some eggs and whatever leftovers I think she'll like and she goes back to her room in town and I get back to the garden, and well, we've had some incredible mommy-daughter time and I am not sure why.

I never sleep better than when Jessie is here, sleeping upstairs in her bed. And I think she sleeps well here, too. We enjoy our talks and our interactions together with the chickens and so forth, but when it boils down to it, we love our naps. Not together, quite, but here in the same house. I know my baby is safe and she knows her mommy is here.

Isn't that funny?

Sleep. Knits up the raveled sleeve of care. We tuck ourselves into our envelopes of sheets (as I always say) and we send ourselves off to that other world where we are here but not here, alive but not actively living, vulnerable as a human being can get. And then we get up, rested and feeling better, ready to attack the next shift of being a human.

I love these naps with Jessie in the house. So do the dogs whom I never let nap with me unless it's storming but whom Jessie always allows into her bed. It's some of the most peaceful sleep I ever get.

I am not one of those people who scorns the wasted time of sleep. I do not see the waste. Sleep is what allows us to be healthy and what allows me to reboot a day. I enjoy it, I respect it, I am ever-so-grateful for it.

I am sleeping alone tonight. Mr. Moon is still on the island. And I am tired, despite my nap. I can't wait to go get in that bed and let sleep overcome me. I know I'll wake up in the middle of water-sipping and cover-flinging over and over but I also know that there will be the sweetness of feeling the heat fade, of needing to pull the covers back up over me, of letting myself drift back into it.

Here I go. I think I am halfway there already, having been prepped and prepared by my sweet nap this afternoon with Jessie in the house.

Sweet dreams, y'all. Let's meet up in the morning and tell each other how it went.