Sunny Winter Day Nap

I used to believe that people who took naps in the middle of the day were boring, or old. This was before I had a child of my own. This was before I realized that the luxury of sleep would and could only be truly appreciated when it wasn't a choice. Even when my daughter was only months old, I tried not to sleep during the day, claiming it would leave me groggy, or that "I didn't need it." Pfft.

There is something about a good day-time nap that realigns the microcosm of your world. Let's your brain and heart rest from the daily grind of processing and feeling things. It allows for space to slide through the stress and judgement of what we could be doing and make room for what we will do and have done.

Today I took a good nap. Lying on my side, face lightly smooched into the back of the couch, with my knees stacked on one another. The wave of rest and the warmth of my body generates and recirculates under the throw blanket I am holding. It is tucked under my chin. The sun pierces through the cold air and freezing breeze to beam into the windows. It spills light all over me, casting shadows over the shape of everything. Shadows I choose not to look at, but rather imagine in my mind. They are there, and my not witnessing doesn't make them less so.

It was the kind of nap that leaves you feeling like the cover of Carol King's "Tapestry" album. The type of mood that reminds me of being young, and taken care of like the smell of warm chocolate chip cookies that are not quite circular because they were made with real flour, mixed in a bowl, shaped and dropped from a spoon. Real, authentic, inherintly deserved safety and calm. I think how lovely it is that my child feels this way, every day, napping in her big-girl bed upstairs.

Simple indulgence comes in many forms. Mine was a small space on a sunny strip of the couch during a blistery boring winters day.