Afternoon Rest

“Wow, Mom! How did you do it!” I cried, full of genuine admiration and respect. “Years of diligence and sacrifice, my dear,” she answered with a sly smile. As usual.

An afternoon rest. Arrest, more like. That was another reason I hated nursery school. Each day after lunch, we rebuilt our playroom into a dormitory, laying rows of mattresses on the carpet with our own pillows and blankets. Some children were lucky: They could go home right after lunch, because they had someone to pick them up earlier, granny or a sibling. I wasn’t the lucky one. “Many children are in school from half past five in the morning. They need some sleep in the afternoon,” a teacher—whom we were supposed to call “Aunt”—always said.

I was not in school from half past five. I used to go there more than an hour later because my mom worked from seven. I didn’t need to sleep in the afternoon; I was a kind of Border Collie. Still in charge. I was deeply disgusted by their sleeping.

The Aunt was obsessed with the idea that every child must sleep after lunch. Dressed in pyjamas, no talking, no moving, no eyes open. She usually read a story, and during her performance, we were obliged to fall asleep, no exceptions. But her stories were short and highly stupid. For example, the one about a girl with a magic rubber, which could erase everything in the world. The silly girl erased her mom because she was angry with her, and then she regretted it, and finally, she drew a new mom with a magic pencil. I found that story very frightening—because everybody knows what it looks like when you are trying to draw a dog, for example. One says it’s a rabbit, another it’s a bear, and my older brother just laughs. So how could the heroine of that story re-draw her mother in her unique perfection, meh?

Lying on my back, eyes closed, without moving, and not sleeping for two hours was impossible. My body, full of unused energy, trembled. In a few minutes, I felt I needed to blow my nose, but I had forgotten my handkerchief in my dress pocket. We were not allowed to go for anything during the afternoon rest, so as “not to wake up the sleeping children”. “Why are you making those terrible sounds with your nose?” the Aunt hissed, suddenly standing right above me. “Don’t you have a handkerchief? Do you have to sniff like that, you ugly girl?” she screamed, no care that she should wake up the children. I fell into a powerless, silent, furious anger with her…

One day, I figured out I could keep my eyes closed, but not properly. I could see secretly through my lashes, and the Aunt-Witch couldn’t tell I was cheating. What a feeling! “Muhehe!” I laughed in my mind like a genuine villain.

And then it came to me: I remembered another time I had been lying with my eyes half-closed. Yes, it had been in Grannie’s village. It was just behind the last buildings, where a land of fields, dusty paths, hills, woods, and a blue sky with white cotton-like clouds begins. “They must be mountains of lemon ice-cream,” I had imagined each time I had been hot in the summer. The land of fairies, dwarfs, and ghosts.

Time ran in its own way there. Independently. Slowly. In a circle.

At the end of the road stood a linden tree, more than a hundred years old, with a stele and a crucifix behind it—a common sight in the Czech countryside. The crucified Jesus had looked small and tender, but somehow protected by the tree’s shelter. Like there had been older gods than he was… I had been lying on my back in the grass under the tree. The summer had just started; the linden had been in blossom. I had breathed in the sweet, heady scent. The leaves had been whispering, and thousands of bees had been gathering nectar. They had not been seen, just heard. Like a huge power plant. A plant of power. “Life is a great adventure. Listen! The treetop is full of old stories. Don’t worry. Your spirit is always free,” the bees had sung.

“Okay, children, wake up! It’s time!” Aunt-Witch announced the end of today’s afternoon rest. “Wow,” I whispered to myself, “I think I invented something! The spell that cuts time!” I found I could travel through the landscape of my thoughts.

The next day I tried it again. Lie calm, breathe slowly. Restore the picture of the tree. Bee power plant. Whisper of leaves… and I FLEW AWAY! If I could have read at that time, maybe I would have known that Jack London’s Star-Rover used the same trick. But I couldn’t read yet.

A few days later, right after lunch, I was preparing myself for my next star travel. And then the miracle came. My mom stood in the doorway. “I decided to pick you up after lunch,” she explained her surprising presence. “But how? How did you do it?” I whispered, full of silent happiness. “Let’s say I just escaped from work today,” she winked conspiratorially. “Wow,” I thought to myself, realising the new insight, “a real escape is possible.”

Every day in nursery school after that event, I stared at the door, hoping for that revelation to happen again. Bless your heart! Miracles are rare in our lives. But escapes are not.