Naptime

It takes over an hour sometimes for the final child to drift off to sleep. I make my rounds tucking them in, kissing their foreheads, rubbing their backs with gentle goodnight whispers reminding them that they’re safe. “Sleep” I tell them, “sleep.”

Within ten minutes, I miss them. I miss their voices and cries and laughter. I miss their energy and vitality. I miss them crawling all over me demanding my attention. By the time they wake up, I have fallen in love with them all over again.

All week long I look forward to Saturday morning when I can finally sleep past 6am, and by Saturday afternoon I’m already wishing to be back at circle time, singing songs, running around on the playground. It’s funny how that happens. It’s funny how I am constantly aching for where I am not, and not in a discontented manner, but in a consistent dreamlike state of what could be.

I watch my little ones and marvel at their existences. How much they have already seen, how much they already know, how much they still have yet to discover, to learn, to understand. How similar we are. I’m not at all convinced that I know more now at age 21 than they do at age 2. It’s simply a different kind of knowledge – facts and figures and responsibilities. A belief in love shattered, a faith in absolutes obscured, an innocence lost. I wonder if such a change is inevitable.

I wonder who they will become. I wonder who it was that I was supposed to be. Did my preschool teachers look at me and see this as my future? Did they sit and watch me sleep so happily, so peacefully, that they couldn’t help but be made better because of my quiet? Sometimes I think all of the secrets in the universe reveal themselves at naptime. To watch a sleeping child may be one of the most serene experiences one can know. It’s calming, it’s moving, it’s everything.

I’ve slept better in the past three weeks than I have in the past three years (excluding India). There’s something that just feels right, at peace, at ease. Yes, there are a million things to do, and the list only seems to get longer with each passing day, but I arrive home each day feeling like I used my day wisely, feeling satisfied, feeling complete. I arrive home each day knowing I made children smile and knowing that each one of them has made me smile. Spreading happiness is like no other sensation on earth. Maybe this is it for me. Maybe this is what I wanted all along.

Who knows. Life can change in an instant, a lesson I learn a thousand times a day. Still, for the present, this is right. For the present, I am here and happy and alive. For the present, I am exactly where I’m supposed to be. And I can sleep peacefully, knowing in my heart that it’s true.