At My Place: The Difference a Nap Makes

Do you allow yourself a nap in the daytime once in a while? Like when you feel quite zoned out, and too tired to hold up your head any longer?

I used to think naps for very young kids or older people who had nothing else to do and so they indulged in naps because they didn't have the strength to make it through a day. Definitely a sign of aging, or nearing the end of their lives.

That may be true for some. But when I am not feeling 100% well, a nap is a wonderful treat, It doesn't have to be long, even just a half hour nap can refresh my mind and will so I'm able to take up a task and do a much better job at it.

My Gr'ma Kroeker understood the value of a nap. I learned this from her.

I had started school already, where I heard about family vacations. I begged Mom for one. She explained that our family could not afford a trip to go see interesting sights. I could however, go over to Gr'ma's house and help her with picking berries and some cucumbers from her gardens.

Gr'ma and I would go picking berries in her garden beside the driveway in the mornings. Raspberries, gooseberries, black currents, and others in the garden beside the driveway.

After lunch she insisted that we both needed naps to get rested for picking in the afternoon. She covered me on the couch with a small blanket, then she went to her bedroom for her nap. When I woke in the afternoon, she had a snack ready for us. Then we went to the BIG garden, some distance into the pasture.

We picked several pails full of peas, beans, dug up carrots, and so on - whatever was ripe enough that day. When we had our red wagon full of pails of nice vegetables I would help her pull it back to the house.

We would sit in the shade of the house and clean off the stems, leaves, etc., to ready them ready for canning.

The naps all made good sense; as Gra'ma explained, if we took naps we'd be stronger for our work, and we would also live longer.

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