between the sheets
in which I tell you my dirty little secret
I’m about to let you in on a dirty little secret of mine.
Most people who know me well, or have simply observed me for any three-minute stretch of time, would probably be shocked by the confession I’m about to make. This habit of mine is a highly subversive one, hence my decision to keep quiet about it until now.
But I think it’s finally time to come clean:
I, Melissa Mowry, lover of productivity and speed for its own sake, am a chronic, lifelong napper.
Years ago, when my kids were in preschool, they had to fill out one of those fun little fill-in-the-blank questionnaires about me for Mother’s Day. I was horrified to find that, in response to the question, “What’s your mom’s favorite thing to do? my older son had answered, “Take naps.” WTF, kid?! I felt scandalized, as if he’d just admitted to his teachers that sometimes his mother likes to kick puppies for fun. (For the record, I don’t.) He had unmasked me as a loafer, a slacker, a slug. My face felt hot when I brought my kids into school the following day, avoiding their teachers’ eyes as I tucked their backpacks and lunchboxes into their cubbies. After an entire adulthood of napping in secret, I had officially been busted.
But only now, six years later, am I starting to understand why I’ve kept this habit so close to the vest: when your life—and indeed your culture—is built around speed and productivity, stopping to recharge one’s battery is an act of rebellion, a shameful, dirty secret akin to admitting you only wash your sheets once a month. (Here you can pause to speculate on whether or not I’m the type of person who falls into this category. But I’m not going to tell you. A girl has to keep some of her secrets.)
On the surface, this habit seems to be in direct conflict with the rest of my personality, given my other lifelong habit of never sitting still. I am forever flitting from one activity to the next, like an anxious little squirrel tucking away acorns for winter. “If I can just get this done now,” I reason with myself, “I’ll have so much time left to relax later.” And then of course, later never comes, because there is always some other acorn to hunt down. But, for me, napping is like some strange productivity loophole that I exploit with surprising regularity. It’s a hard shutdown of my entire system, much the same as when my phone seems to be on the fritz and my husband says, “Well, it looks like you haven’t restarted it in thirty-four days.” Oh yeah, that.
Sometimes the easy option is actually the right one.
When my kids were little, I napped out of sheer exhaustion. In school, I was always a suck-up model student and when the nurses at the hospital told me to nap when the baby napped, I gave it my full effort. I also napped when they were toddlers and preschoolers, because every single minute of those ages was insanely tiring. I was still drinking back then, making naps a necessity (see: vicious hangovers and late nights) and my gut health was abysmal, which meant I often dragged myself through my various obligations, brain-fogged and lethargic. But then I got sober and healed my gut and I figured I’d be powering through my days, full of vim and vigor. But to my surprise, I still needed the naps.
What I’ve discovered about myself in the intervening years is not that I’m a chronically tired person. What I am is a big feeling, wildly curious, extroverted introvert with the tendency to work in short, feverish bursts. On any given day, I might sit at my computer and work on my novel for two hours straight without once getting up to pee or look at my phone. When I’m really in it, I’m completely absorbed, funneling all my emotional and intellectual energy into the scene I’m writing. Alternately, I might also be giving the same kind of intense, focused energy to a book I’m reading and taking notes on, a recipe I’m trying to follow, a friend whose words I’m trying to absorb and mirror back to her. I give everything I have to what I’m doing, and afterward I usually need a hard reset.
My sister, a fellow napper, tells me that there are four distinct levels to a nap: Level 1: couch with no blanket. Level 2: couch with blanket. Level 3: in bed, no covers. Level 4: in bed, under the covers. (My friend Holly insists that there are actually five levels, number five being: in bed, under the covers, with pajamas on. I like that immensely.) I’m generally a Level 1 or 2 napper, but the level I observe depends on my own level of need. Sometimes, I just really need a full-on, under-the-covers, two-hour-long, drool-on-the-pillow nap. I find that these under-the-cover days most often happen after a draining social interaction, a particularly loud or crowded setting, an emotionally charged day, or an especially intense creative burst. (In what I consider to be a moment of peak friendship, my friend Michelle and I recently went on a long hike and then came back to my house and napped on separate couches for an hour before a group dinner we knew would require our full energy.)
As author and Patron Saint of Peace, Anne Lamott so wisely said, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” So I ask you this: if you’re a creative, emotional, wildly curious, easily overwhelmed person with slightly insane work habits who is low-grade exhausted all the time, do you think, in addition to gender equality and economic stability and world peace and a really good therapist, you might also just need a freaking nap?
I thought so. Here, go ahead and lie down. I’ll get you a blanket.
What I’m Paying Attention to This Week:
In our neck of the woods:
My son (15 months) has always needed extra support with napping, and while sometimes frustrating, it has been an easy way to get extra sleep in for myself too. Naps are a survival strategy!
Well, now I want a Level 5 nap! I love that moment of peak friendship - hiking and napping companionably.