NOCTURNAL DAYS
Will Napping Extend Your Life?
Boy! Did I sleep
My stepfather studied sleep. Napping was as religious to him as his research. He was the only person I ever met who spent a lifetime trying to answer one question.
Why do we sleep?
He napped every day from 5–7 p.m. One of the conditions of this 50-year-old, confirmed bachelor, moving in with our family of four, was the installation of thick soundproof curtains to the third-floor entry.
The third floor contained his home office and his nap room. Until I wrote the words nap room just now, it never occurred to me how unusual that was.
A nap room. A room only for napping. His bed was covered in a soft, worn, mustard-colored down comforter that smelled like his soap and shaving cream.
The nap room had its own bathroom with a clawfooted tub where I once bathed after being attacked and covered in mud by elementary school bullies.
The nap room was a sanctuary, where sometimes when I had a fever, I preferred it to my own bedroom. On top of the two-drawered dresser, beside the bed, sat a heavy long-necked table lamp that I occasionally held a thermometer up to — when I wanted to fake a fever.
He kept a bottle of very dry vermouth on the bedside which he poured into a small glass and ritually sipped before his nap.
The nap room was as sacred as the nap. It was an ashram. We never interrupted a nap. We never found a reason to.
I often wonder what could have constituted interrupting a nap. Maybe a fire or if someone broke into our house. Maybe if one of us ended up injured or in jail. Luckily those things only happened when my stepfather was awake, so we never had to find out. Even the universe respected the nap’s parameters.
In my childhood imagination, waking him would be like waking a hibernating bear or a cave-dwelling dragon. Almost every time he awoke, my stepfather would say “Boy! Did I sleep!” A boy meant it was a good nap.
When he forgot to say those words, we’d ask, “Was it a boy?” Usually, it was. There were no other boys in our house. We were all women, even the dogs. The only boys were my stepfather and his naps.
This afternoon, I took a nap. It was a boy. I normally don’t nap during the day though my stepfather insisted naps gave you two entire days — a morning day and an evening day. I cherry-picked his wisdom.
I don’t take naps unless I am practically hallucinating, falling over, or can’t lift my head from my desk. But every time I nap, I think of my stepfather who is currently taking a big nap in the sky. I wonder if he has kept his same nap schedule or if in death, he no longer needs to turn one day into two.
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