Dear Luki,

As you’ve probably figured out by now, your dad and I love to sleep. And we hope to instill that same passion for naps and lazy weekend mornings in you from an early age. You know, we are very impressed by your vast repertoire of tricks — from clapping on command to saying MA-MA — but nothing pleases us more than when you manage to sleep in past 8 a.m. It is, by far, your greatest accomplishment to date.

Your grandpa loved to sleep too. But not in the same lazy, hit-the-snooze-button-three-times, no-time-for-breakfast, race-to-work-every-morning way we love to sleep. He always woke up at an ungodly hour to go to work and often put in double digit hour days, but he managed to sneak in naps at the most unusual times. He used to say that he wasn’t napping, that he was “resting his eyes,” and he did it while stopped at a red light, in the middle of conversations, at the cinema, sometimes even as he stood in line at the post office or the grocery store.

I remember when I was a little girl, he would lie next to me at night and attempt to tell me a bedtime story. And then the little dog asked his friend the squirrel…zzzzzzzzz…… “Daddy!” I’d say and tap him on the shoulder, “What happened to the little dog?” He’d wake up, startled, and continue… And then the hippopotamus found her baby and they all lived happily ever after. “What? Where did that hippo come from?” I’d try to reason…as his eyes closed again while he mumbled something about a giraffe.

The thing about your grandpa, though, was that even if he was in a deep slumber, he had the ability to wake up and act instantaneously.

Your grandma loves to tell the story about the night he heard me calling because I needed to go to the bathroom. He got up right away, but instead of going to fetch me, he picked up your sleeping grandma and attempted to take her to the toilet. As she screamed, asking him to put her down, he kept shushing and trying to comfort her. It wasn’t until he was halfway down the hall that he realized it wasn’t me in his arms, instead, his perfectly capable of going to the bathroom on her own wife.

The speed with which he reacted was impressive. Sometimes we would walk into his bedroom and startle him while he was napping, just to see how quickly he managed to spring to his feet, ready to work, to fix, to handle any situation that needed his attention.

Luki, as much as I am encouraging you to sleep soundly right now so that we can have our lazy Saturday mornings back, I really hope that you grow up to be the kind of man who doesn’t lollygag, who can act quickly despite being tired or sleepy, who is always ready to spring to his feet.

Love,

Mom