By my junior year in college, I had acquired a serious interest in napping. Although hating it as a kid, the rediscovery of dozing in the daytime was one of the great awakenings of higher education. The zeal which I brought to this practice elevated it to performance art.
After a tough afternoon of study, or research, or attendance at a lab, or what is just as likely, playing volleyball; I repaired to my dorm room. Clad only in shorts I splayed myself face down in the pillow and zonked out while the sounds of college wafted in my second-story window on the spring breeze — the best white noise ever! One of my friends would give a wake-up knock on the door, just in time for me to stumble off to the dining hall for dinner.
It was not a struggle to nap; it came honestly. My grandfather was a Johnson from the Lone Star State, and like six-hundred-thousand other Texas Johnsons, he claimed a familial relationship with the former President of the same name who — as anyone might remember from reading the papers — was a committed napper. My granddad, like the former Chief Executive, would go to the bedroom after lunch, take off his clothes, put on his pajamas, draw the blinds, jump in bed, pull up the covers, turn out the light and saw some serious wood for an hour-and-a-half.
Not the sofa. Not the recliner. Not the hammock. No Ma’am. The Bed!
As good as he was, though, he did not come close to rivaling my father who was the unquestioned champion of nodding off. For the last twenty-five years of his life, Ted took four naps a day. His seasonal job, his semi-retirement status, his flexible schedule, and the proximity of our house to his work made it possible for him to organize his life and his calendar around the time he spent on the daybed in the den.
After checking messages and mail at the office, he returned home for a 20-minute mid-morning power nap. After an early lunch he stretched out for about 40 minutes. He got home for a few winks before dinner, and in the late evening he fell asleep in front of the TV. We woke him up to go to bed.
Although napping has been a regular pastime for me from college forward; on most days it has been limited to one nap, never rising to my dad’s level of commitment. For years, the nap was a luxury, a few moments stolen from otherwise busy days. However, now it is a necessity for me and many other guys my age. When you are approaching 80, you make two or three trips a night to the bathroom, which destroys your “rem” cycle. Sleep is a vital component of a healthy lifestyle, which makes the nap essential.
Nowadays there is a well-established routine, which is determined by my youngest grandson who is thirteen months old. When Davey starts to yawn and rub his eyes and appears to be ready to give up the ghost, the pre-nap routine kicks in: change his diaper, put him in his “zippy,” fix his bottle, settle into the rocking chair. As he sucks away, his eyes dim to half-mast, and I sing softly one or more of his favorite tunes, like “Truly Scrumptious” or “Bring Him Home” or “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”
By the time the bottle is empty, he is out scout; but I am not ready to put him down just yet. Cradled in my arms, his head is turned and pressed against my chest, and I am holding on just a moment more. Like with his older brothers, his naptime will eventually disappear, and I will sorely miss these quiet times of exquisite closeness with a grandson. This moment stirs up a lovely memory of his mommy who also fell asleep on my chest.
Because we are blessed to live under the same roof as our daughter and her husband and their three boys, my crib is not too far from Davey’s crib. He will sleep until he wakes, and so will I. Napping will be very different when there is no longer a grandson to share a pre-nap routine with his Poppa.
Yes, there will be an adjustment, but there will always be biographies and Kenny G and Dodger games to lower the pulse and dim my consciousness. The grandsons may give up their naps, but their relentless energy will continue to tire me out — a good pre-req for sleeping in the afternoon.
Many adults eschew napping and regard it as wasted time. My friend Frank and I are not among them. Since our college days his devotion to napping has been as intense as my own. A philosophy major, he offered up pithy sayings of the kind that Mr. Miyagi spouts in “The Karate Kid.” So, once I asked him to drop me some wisdom on napping. After sleeping on it for a while, he came up with a phrase that captures one of my strongest feelings:
“Wakefulness is highly overrated.”
Tidings from Tim 