Naptime

Waking up can sometimes be a distressing effort for me. It is not that I not a morning person, for the most part I am. In the morning I usually feel rested and am ready to face a new day and all that it may bring into my life. It is not actually the waking up part that is difficult for me; instead it is the feeling that accompanies the wakefulness.

To wake up after an afternoon nap, whether it is taken at home, during a car, or airplane trip reminds me of the feeling I would get as a child when forced to take a nap, a feeling that perhaps while I was in a state of repose I may have missed something important. As the youngest in my family it frustrated me that all my older siblings were allowed to stay up, or to go outside and play while my younger brother and I were put into a crib, usually together to have our afternoon nap. The curtains were drawn, perhaps a blanket was put up over the window to drown out the light, in an attempt by my eldest brother to fool us into thinking it was night. The bedroom door a piece of plywood cut to fit the opening into my parent’s bedroom, with large metal hinges was secured with an eye and hook lock on the outside. Everyone was told to stay out and not to disturb the babies because they needed to sleep.

I would lie in the crib with my feet sticking through the rails against a wall that was constructed of bare and worn two-by-fours with old boards nailed together in a haphazard manner, sometimes joined together smoothly, and in other places with a one-quarter to one-half inch gap, to give the illusion that it was a finished wall. I can remember the feel of the boards against my feet, while I lay in the crib and I “walked” up and down the wall in an effort to calm myself. My tiny toes fitting easily into the gaps between the boards. I would grind my teeth and hum to myself as my feet caressed the well worn boards. I can remember putting my face against my brother, Ty’s cheek as I continued to hum so the vibrations would soothe him as well as me. I could hear cars and large trucks driving by and I could hear shouts and voices talking outside and in other parts of the house. I longed to be a part of the clamor but instead my baby brother and me, still the baby too, were relegated to the bedroom to nap.

As much as I fought to stay awake to continue to listen to what everyone was saying, trying to imagine what they could be doing while I was stuck with a crying baby, it was impossible. Sleep would over take me once Ty had fallen silent beside me his breath soft and regular against my cheek. Only then would I finally fall asleep with dreams of what could be.

It was then upon waking that a feeling of loss and isolation would overtake me. What had everyone else been doing while I, the baby girl among a houseful of children, slept? Did they get to go to the store, were they able to walk or ride to the school less than a mile away and play at the playground, did they get some kind of a treat that the baby and I missed. That feeling that life had spun on and on like a top, while we slept, that there was something significant that had occurred that I was not privy to, could never hope to be as long as I was the baby made to nap.

I hoped at times that it would be my mother who would came in the room to lift me out of the crib when my napping was over, but invariably it was my oldest brother or oldest sister who had taken on this motherly duty. That in itself, left me feeling bereft, where had my mother gone?