Catnaps

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of care,

The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath,

Balm of hurt minds, great Nature's second course,

Chief nourisher in life's feast.

--Shakespeare, _Macbeth_

For the thirteen years that I worked in a publishing house, every lunch break, when the lights had all been turned off, my officemates would bring their throw pillows inside the conference room, pull chairs together into a kind of makeshift beds, and sleep for a whole thirty minutes. To this day, I still envy those catnaps. How could they sleep that soundly even with the aircon off? (I also tried to sleep at the conference room sometimes, and I heard most of them snore). Today as I work at home, my one desire is to be able to sleep soundly even for fifteen minutes during the hottest hour of the day. But even as I try everyday, all I get is a headache.

I don't remember enjoying a sound catnap in my life, not even when I was a child.

I think the reason was that my mother did not force on us a siesta habit. Back then, we did not have a room, we just had a sala and a kitchen. The bamboo papag where we slept side by side under a mosquito net at night was in the sala. My mother did not like to go through the trouble of spreading a mat on the papag after lunch hour, by which time, she would need to wash the dishes then get ready to go out and sell Avon. I can't remember a time when she said, "Okay now, sleep." She would be always busy doing and finishing this and that chore, that she left us on our own to run and play.

My mother had worries and problems we did not even feel were there. Never the complaining type, she was solving them on her own. We lived in three houses when I was a child. Constantly moving, my mother needed to be creative and resourceful to make ends meet, maintain harmonious relations with the neighbors, and take care of two sons and two daughters. For her own peace of mind, she preferred to let us out of the house and roam around the neiborhood to play with other kids, rather than have us stay inside the house. She dealt with us, on her time, at her pace. Outside, we played all the catch-me-if-you-can varieties, Prisoner, banggol, patintero, tisod, piko, and we threw sticks and we made mud pies with playmates whose names we did not even ask. When we came back home, we were always too smelly and too dirty, but the only requirement was that we should wash our feet. My mother would call us by name before it got dark, and she would say it's time to wash our feet. I remembered this ritual very well because it was like S.O.P. while taking a siesta was not.

During weekends, when I was in high school, it was not anymore possible to catnap because since I was a member of the "sing out" I was always in school on a Saturday, rehearsing for a school presentation or something. On a Sunday I would be ironing two huge bundles of clothes. That was my major house chore assignment when I was a teenager. My mother is a very prudent woman and she did not allow us to iron our clothes every time we would use them. On a Monday, all the clothes would be ready to wear because I would have ironed them all, including linens, pillow cases, and curtains, from morning till night on a Sunday. (We went to the catholic church then, only when we felt like it, which was not often). I did not mind this chore that much because it seemed then that all my peers were doing the same thing every weekend. After ironing, my mother wouldn't allow me to sleep since she said that would make me go crazy (I don't know where she got this theory).

In college, I was always rehearsing a play during weekends. Or I would be in some leadership training seminar of the Kabataang Barangay. I hardly slept in college. I can remember going home too late at night with the reason that I was at a rehearsal. Most of the time, I was at a rehearsal, but sometimes, our barkada just wanted to be together a longer time, and we loitered around the city, talking, talking, talking, about anything. That was the 80s and we also sometimes went to the disco or spent nights together in each other's houses. Those were days when the last thing I wanted to do was sleep.

Today I need to really sleep. I am suffering from sleep deprivation. I need to close my eyes at the very time I feel sleepy because if I don't, this sleepiness will run away with the hours . I tell myself that If I could sleep just for an hour during the day, this would already make a difference. So I force myself to go to bed and sleep, but all I do in bed is think about things undone, and eventually, I get up and finish them. (This is a classic. While living alone in Cavite, some nights, when I would be lying in bed and was about to sleep, I would notice the cobwebs on the ceiling, and feel the dust, and I would get up from bed and sweep the floor or empty drawers or scrub tiles or dust my dining table.)

Right now, my workplace is a mess of papers and dictionaries not properly shelved. I need to clean this room. I am also trying to insert into my schedule a wash day, since the dirty clothes have piled up and there is no maid to pick them up. I still don't have a room to sleep. I don't want to sleep in my workplace. The books scream for attention. Instead I sleep on a sofa bed downstairs. My mother uses it while she watches TV which is after lunch, and from evening newscast on 7 until bakekang) I use it only after she's through watching TV. I try to use her bed during siesta hours but here at the second floor, it is very hot.

I have looked for a solution to my problem, that is, how to add an extra sleep hour to my routine. Once, when I was tired and needed to really close my eyes and be physically far away from house and work, I went to my friend's camp place in Banaba. I borrowed a hut, lay myself down and closed my eyes. I did not fall asleep, but somehow the breeze helped me to relax . The bamboo floor reminded me of our papag, but I was happy that I did not have to spread a mat, and I was too far to go back to all my unfinished tasks.

Unless the Lord builds the house,
those who build it labor in vain.
Unless the Lord watches over the city,
the watchman stays awake in vain.
2 It is in vain that you rise up early
and go late to rest,
eating the bread of anxious toil;
for he gives to his beloved sleep.

—Psalm 127:1-2