Afternoon Nap

Usually, she won't fall back to sleep for me.  Most often, I'll pick her up, out of her bed, and she'll look about tearfully until the sleepiness wears off.  Naps are shorter and shorter, these days.

But today, when I come to rescue her, she rests her sleepy head on my shoulder, and no sooner have I lowered us into the rocking chair than her whimpers subside.  Had I known, had I expected this, I might have grabbed a book or a magazine on the way in, but she's a paper-thin sleeper in the daytime, and I don't dare disturb this moment by standing up.

In front of me, the blinds are closed, and I can only see through an oblong, rectangular hole, from which she has bent and broken the flimsy slats in nap-times past.  I see bare branches and a blue sky, little else.  From behind me, the west-facing window is beginning to leak sunlight, marking our passage from afternoon to evening.

I've read that small children don't sleep as deeply when rocking or riding in a car, and I try to sit still, but the effort causes my muscles to tense. Beneath her head, my bicep twitches.  Her steady breathing quickens, ever so slightly, so I begin to rock again.  Her little hands - not so little as they once were, I'm all too aware - stir slightly, resting across her chest.

I begin to string words together in my mind, unravel them, and begin again.  I call up other fond memories.  I am deliberately building this moment into the continuum of peace that stitches my life to unbending, unchanging reason.  Part of me still wishes for something to read, but I am willing that this nap should last as long as it may.  There are already so few like it left to me, in her lifetime.

Eventually, she stirs.  Her eyelids flicker, sleepily, blinking, drooping, and blinking.  She sighs a time or two.  Instead of her typical, tearful awakening, the little strawberry lips begin to form sweet, nonsense words, and I talk back.

Now, she is seizing a toy and scrambling, as best she can, across the floor, with a mischievous laugh, ready to be chased down and tickled.  Our moment of stillness is over, and once again, she's growing up.