Confessions of a napper convert
Jennifer Ditlevson Haglund
On Sunday afternoons, my parents would banish all my siblings and me to our bedrooms for “naptime,” which provided them a minimum of 30 minutes of release of refereeing arguments for the bathroom time, who stole whose towel, and taking requests for evening activities.
We weren’t forced into sleep, but we had to find a quiet activity to occupy those 30 interminable minutes shut in our rooms with whatever sibling we shared that space. Even though I was always a reader, I hated those naptimes. Napping seemed beneath my dignity, and no one was going to tell me how I was going to spend my time. I watched one of my sisters, with whom I shared a room, crash into the bottom bunk and doze readily after church and our big lunches.
What tortured me, she welcomed. I associated it with our differences in personality. She struggled to wake for school on time, while I usually stirred at the first sound of my father grinding coffee downstairs at 6 a.m.
Sleep, I told myself, was for the weak and the lazy. When I saw a neurologist for severe migraines when I became a teenager, my parents asked if my regular lack of sleep was healthy. He replied that they need not worry, as long as I kept up my grades. Several highly productive people didn’t require much sleep, he said, mentioning Leonardo da Vinci, Nikola Tesla, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Edison as examples.
That’s all I needed to support my hypothesis that those who slept were either ill or wasting time. I don’t know how much I slept through high school, college, or graduate school, but it wasn’t much. There was too much to do. If I slept, I crashed in the most uncanny postures and places.
Then I got married. Early on, despite the chaotic schedules of graduate school, we decided to go to bed at the same time every night. There would be no all-nighters, unless it were absolutely necessary. It was a courtesy and practice I still acknowledge as beneficial to our union. I would wake without an alarm at the identical time in the mornings and it bothered me that my spouse lay there for what seemed like hours. Rarely could I busy myself for more than an hour and a half before rousing him from sleep because I was sick of being alone and bored.
Most of the time, he thought it was cute. But he liked his sleep. I tease him about being lazy or airheaded, but it’s not true. Tim is goofy, but his Graduate Record Examinations score was higher than mine, he finished his doctoral degree in five years while working several jobs, and he knows how to read as deeply into a text as any literature professor I’ve ever had. He just knows how to nap and sleep in.
I didn’t get it until I got pregnant with our daughter. Before I found out why, my body refused my pride, pulling me directly into sleep five minutes into reading a novel. When Tim would return from a run, he’d find me lying on the floor, my face plastered on an open book page.
He told me that he knew I must be pregnant for two reasons: “all the dinosaur belches and dog naps — you know, the kind where you sleep so hard your face droops to one side.”
Endearing, I know.
Almost three years after being introduced to the wonderful, renewing world of naps, I confess I misjudged those who figured out something long before I did. At first, I felt guilty every time I permitted myself the luxury and wondered if I were becoming less of myself. I was losing my claim on being a proud never-napper, but there should be no shame.
When I can find time to snooze, even for 20 minutes, I’m no different than my toddler upon waking her regular siesta. I’m happier, my skin looks better — after I wipe the drool and couch pillow design impressions from it — and I’m ready to have a good time.
Besides, I’m no Tesla or Edison. I never will be, and I’ve come to like that dreamy feeling of waking from an unexpected catnap. If there’s any genius in me, I think I’ll find it in that space between sleep and wakefulness. Even if I never produce anything worthwhile, at least I’m well rested and in a better mood now.
Jennifer Ditlevson Haglund is a former news reporter for the Maryville Daily Forum, now living and writing in New York City.
