While I was growing up, my parents always enforced a Sunday afternoon nap. My brother and I hated it. I would always sneak from my room to his, being careful to sidestep the squeak in front of my parents’ door, and we would make a metropolis for his Matchbox cars in the folds of a crumpled blanket.
Well, I’ve changed my tune. Not only do I love my Sunday afternoon naps now, but I also love my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday afternoon naps. In fact, the whole country of Cambodia adores them. The heat is so unbearable during the noon time (and also to account for travel time by foot, bike, or motorbike) that my school breaks for a 3 hour lunch break (11am - 2pm).
Because I opted out of buying a fan for my bedroom and I’m tired of sweating through my mattress (it reaches temperatures around 120 degrees in there in the afternoon), I now take my naps downstairs. Communal napping has become one of my favorite aspects of Khmer culture.
Today, I lay, curled up on the wooden couch that my family bought with my rent money about a year into my stay here. My father sprawled across our low-laying ‘bed,’ my sister and brother-in-law and their baby lay on their mattress in the corner where they all shared the same long pillow, and my nephew cuddled with my mother on the cool ceramic tile floor.
I drifted off to the sounds of my nephew slapping his thigh against the floor as he bounced his leg up and down and the sounds of my niece talking to the mermaid sticker in the palm of her hand.
I love having found that sleeping doesn’t need to be a lonely endeavor.
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