a nap

I do not nap.

And I don't look down on people who do—as in, How dare you waste your God-given day like that?

It's just that I'm not good at it, just as I'm not good at any dance that doesn't involve set steps.

On a related note: Why, oh why, don't we waltz anymore? Or tango. Or foxtrot. Or even do those English country dances so heavily featured in Jane Austen movies {aka, the one time men and women were allowed to hold hands without it causing a scandal}.

No, instead, we have to do the bounce and flail. The shake and twirl. The sway and make eye contact. Today, we are missing the weight that a dance together—a first dance together—can carry. Dancing has become, for the most part, a non-moment.

As the dance has deconstructed into nothing but a way to bop along in time {or not in time} to the music, we've lost the social graces that a dance used to effortlessly bring.

Bringing this back to the nap—because I certainly didn't expect to take that detour into dancing {one that made me sound like an agitated former debutante}—I will repeat: I do not nap.

But Sunday afternoon as I ate my leftovers from Saturday brunch, I felt the weight of tiredness creep up.

Sitting outside on my balcony, I thought about how cozy it would be inside on my bed. I knew precisely what I was doing: I was saying that I was going inside to read, propped up in bed like someone with all the time in the world on their hands, but really, I was going to read for 10 minutes and then curl up under the covers.

A nap!

I let myself do it, ignoring thoughts and plans of re-lining my kitchen shelves with contact paper.

Because when a summer afternoon is calling to you with offers of rest, you listen. You don't ignore that call for contact paper, of all things.

I finished my book about cooking and eating alone and then let it drop to the ground.

And I slept.

For 14 minutes.

I told you—I'm not good at it.

But allowing myself 14 minutes of rest—now that is something to get better at.