Zen and the Art of the Nap

Sunday, June 9, 2013; 3:45 p.m. EDT

Everything I know about naps I learned from the Sensei Master of Napping, my husband.

He comes by it honestly. The Neufelds are champion nappers. Inquiring, “Did you sleep?” of a bleary-eyed, bed-headed Neufeld arisen from a near-coma afternoon siesta is a deeply ironic question.

I have come rather reluctantly to the practice of catching a few zzz’s midday. Becoming nap-averse might have started in kindergarten when we had to get out our mats and lie quietly on the floor for a half hour. I always suspected this wasn’t so much for our benefit as for our teacher’s, presumably so that she could catch a breather. For me it was an ordeal of toss and turn torture.  

Not that my own family didn’t offer a few life lessons in the lie-down. My Dad was a prodigious napper; no slouch on the couch, you might say. You might even say, in a classic conundrum, that he spent every waking hour sleeping. The old man came home from work at lunch to catch a catnap. He nodded off in front of the TV every night (“DAD! You’re missing the show!” “HUH? What? No, I wasn’t! I was just resting my eyes during the commercials.”) He spent untold weekend hours on the sofa snoring into a toss cushion. Ken used to say that he wasn’t sure in the early years of our dating if maybe my Dad was paraplegic as he never got up when Ken came to our house to pick me up. (“Good evening, Mr. Malcolm!” “Mmmmm-pphhh,” was the reply from the toss cushion.)

In the early years of our marriage, I regarded afternoon sleeps as a grand waste of a good Saturday or Sunday afternoon. I chided Ken for this slothful practice. But my nagging was for nought and, in his true principled nature, he persisted.

And as the years have worn on, I have come to understand the curative qualities of a well-executed nap. Observations of my Sensei have been inspirational. It is like watching a sculptor coaxing form out of stone, or a Buddhist monk entering a trance-like meditation. At this stage of mastery, my guru can fall asleep at the drop of an eyelid, and stay somnambulant throughout tornado sirens.

I have much to learn. I began my instruction in the Zen of napping too late in life to achieve full Enlightenment. I have yet to achieve even my kensho, my first awakening, as it were. Where my dear man can slumber through the incessant growl of lawn mowers, weed whackers and leaf blowers, not to mention kids shouting, dogs barking and basketballs bouncing, my peace can be shattered in an instant.

Take yesterday afternoon, for example. One lawn-mowing begat another, leap-frogging like wild fire or flu from neighbor to neighbor, bouncing across the street and back again, finally culminating at the house kitty-corner that has a lawn the size of Yellowstone National Park. I 'm nervous to go lie down today. Surely I will suffer napus interruptus once again. 

Teach me in the ways of the Nap, Sensei!  I do so long to be snoozing.

Love and Namastei,

Grasshopper