Maybe as a baby I liked taking naps. But as a six-year-old, with the great outdoors to explore, it was boring. Inconvenient. A total waste of time. The only one who benefited from it was my mother, who was relieved to get me out of her hair for awhile.
Most days, after a bit of tossing and turning, I could finally doze off. Other days my overactive brain just would not go to sleep, telling me I could be outside playing in the warm sunshine, swinging on the swing or looking for lizards under rocks. And I could even be wading in the creek if I didn’t have to take a stupid nap.
Beneath my bedroom was a back room; our everything room where the kitchen sinks, water pump, and galvanized tubs were. It even had a small heater standing in the middle of the large, unfinished room where we would stand to get warm after our baths.
Whenever I’d hear a noise down there, I’d sneak out of bed, crawl to the hole in the old wooden floor and have a peek. One day my fourteen-year-old brother had taken a bath and was standing stark naked in front of the heater. When he looked up at the ceiling I jumped back in bed for fear he’d catch me looking at him and tell mom.
Then the day I’ll never forget was when my three-year-old brother was in the back room. Jealous that he was up and I wasn’t, I snuck out of bed to see what he was doing. Quietly, I crawled to my look out, placed my eye over the hole and saw him sitting on his potty. He was so cute with his plump, rosy cheeks and big bright eyes. And he was doing good sitting there too, till he looked up at the ceiling. Suddenly, he jumped off his potty, and with his bare butt shining, he ran out of the room crying, “Mommy! Mommy! There’s an eye looking at me!”
One thing good I can say about nap time. When I couldn’t sleep, I had plenty of entertainment.
~ Sandi
The digital painting is of my great-grandson, Gideon. He is now going on three. He doesn’t like nap time either!
Straight from the Heart 