Naps are a big deal in our house these days.
Our five-year-old is convinced she has outgrown them. Most days she is right.
Our two-year-old desperately needs them but fights them tooth and nail.
My wife relies on them as she moves through pregnancy as a mom of two small kids.
Our seven-year-old dog’s favorite time of the day is naptime.
When I was first put on heart medicine in college I noticed a recurring side-effect for every different medicine: drowsiness. Practically speaking, this meant that I spent a lot of time sleeping. A good sleep-in and a delicious nap were on the menu most days of my late teens and early twenties.
I’ve learned to live with the drowsiness in my thirties as daily naps no longer fit with a working schedule. Still, there are days when the stars align and I can retreat to the couch with an episode of The West Wing as the soundtrack to my midday snooze.
It takes trust to nap.
To step out of the flow of the day for a time of wasteful, unproductive rest is a revolutionary act. Rest is resistance. The Nap Ministry has highlighted this fact.
It is worth remembering that Jesus napped. When the apprentices of Jesus were caught in a storm at sea, tossed to and fro by their worry and dread, Jesus was curled up below deck. Jesus existed in a grounded state of trust - that fundamental trust that allows you to rest. Until his friends could trust him in the same way, they would never rest either in storm or stillness.
We are at the tail end of New Year’s Resolution-tide. It starts before Christmas and runs until the end of January. It is a magical time when everything seems possible and every self-improvement company or influencer is ready to sell you on the idea that if you buckle down this could be the year that you _________. (Lose the weight or eat that certain way or write The Great American Novel etc. etc.)
I do believe that you can do amazing things. I do believe that you can do some of the things you want to do.
I don’t believe you can do everything. I don’t believe you can be anything you want to be. I think we all love to believe that sheer effort is what is keeping us from enlightenment or success or that mythical place where our to-do list is complete - I know I do.
We are limited, finite creatures. We have about four thousand weeks to live if all goes well. There is not enough time to do it all, but there is time to do a few things and time enough to rest.
This week’s poem started last week as my son protested his daily nap. His protest felt like a primal cry against limitation that I share, even though I don’t stomp my feet and scream as much as my two-year-old. Parenting has taught me many things including the truth that we are all toddlers on the inside.
22. Naps are a hostile thing when you are two Naps are a hostile thing when you are two and everything is new like the hardwon scraps of sentences spoken and tsunami heights of emotion that rise and crash without siren. He stomps his feet in opposition; lets fly a primal, piercing No! as though protesting everything he is only just learning is out of his control. I know he needs rest. He knows only that bellicose No! lodged in his throat floating up the stairs to the nursery where he lies down screaming, tucks into my chest next to me on the bed, and shuts his eyes - all without surrendering his cries. The No! diminishes slowly like aftershocks until all that remains is his two-year-old hand resting open on my stubble-covered cheek and his mind silently set on the infinite yes of sleep dotted with dreams and shielded from the No’s his life will hold and this spinning world will throw.
Tori stopped napping at 2. We instituted feet on bed time because like your wife i needed her to nap. She was allowed to have a book and drowsed about half the time. We used a kitchen timer and she was allowed up after it went off. That ended up on a shelve as she figured out pretty quickly how to adjust it!