Fidgety Flowers by Irene SuchockiI love to sleep, to nap. There is something so strangely, safely comforting in going to sleep in the afternoon, with maybe a tinkling of windchimes in the background or maybe music so low you can barely hear it. I love to keep the window open and hear a soft breeze through the trees myself. Upon awakening the sun (hopefully) is streaming through the window, I'm warm and sleepy cozy in my down duvet, and after a wee while I realise that I still have twilight and nighttime to look forward to.
One particular nap that I can remember is from my freshman year in HS. I took volleyball that year, and practices were naturally exhausting. I was picked up after one practice by my grandma, and taken back to her apartment as my family were meeting there for dinner. Thoroughly spent, I slogged back to her bedroom, collapsed on her bed, and fell instantly asleep. This is notable because it always takes me ages to get to get to sleep. I woke up maybe an hour later, it was dark, the window was open, and a wonderful breeze was wafting through the trees into the room. It was still blessedly quiet (again, notable, as I am from a family of 7!!), and I laid there, completely at peace, blissfully contented, for at least a little while longer.
The second best sleep of my life was when I was fifteen. After spending the summer with my grandparents (Mitchell) in Utah, my family came by to pick me up en route to BYU where my older sister was headed for college. We stopped to visit my grandpa Porter, and stayed a night there. Again, as one of five kids, I was delighted to find my bed for the night was a cot out on the back porch. Privacy! A night alone! Bliss! Grandpa's porch was set a little high up, and it was surrounded by wood railings that were covered with spirals of grapevines. When the time came, I snuggled down in my sleeping bag, virtually cocooned, safely swaddled. It was quiet, and as I watched the stars for a wee bit, I slowly drifted off to the most comforting dreamless sleep, completely undisturbed. I awoke the next morning on my wee cot to a soft breeze rustling the vines that held tiny bunches of grapes, and thought, this is heaven!!
My next favourite memories are ones I will never forget. The kindness of strangers. The boy in my German class who lent me money to retrieve my beat up mail jeep after it was towed. He didn't really know me, he didn't know my situation, he didn't know I had no where to turn, that the relatively small fee might as well have been $1000. But he did know I would pay him back the day I was paid from one of my jobs, and he knew how very grateful I was. However, he couldn't possibly have known, and never could I, that I would remember his kindness forever, and that nearly 17 years from then I would still cry at his generosity.
And my very first roommate in Provo, Utah, when I was 19. Angie. When she arrived early from work the day I moved in and saw me sleeping on my bare mattress, with one of her duvets wrapped around me, she didn't wake me up and snatch the blanket from me or demand an explanation, she quietly shut the door and let me sleep on. She saw that I had one small suitcase. She saw I had no sheets, no pillow. Again, she didn't know how dire my situation was or that I was very alone, but she did take me under her wing and became like a sister to me in the months to come. She knew how grateful I was, but again, neither she nor I knew that as the years passed I would think and weep over her kindness during a very difficult time in my life again and again.
I'm sure I'll had to this as I am to my list of oddities below, which is becoming disturbingly longish!
