naps.

He really liked taking naps. He fell asleep mid-evening and arose far earlier in the morning than I ever could have become accustomed to. As kids, nap time was the most boring part of the day. We had to stay in our rooms, re-reading select titles from the hundreds crammed incorrectly into the bookshelf, or building forts (quietly, of course). Sometimes Angel and I were allowed to go into each other's rooms, but if we were loud enough to wake the sleeping giant across the house, we were in huge trouble. I remember at the old house being told that I would get spanked if I woke Daddy up during nap time.

Naps were different than bedtime. You could come home and into his room at any hour of the night and he would happily raise his tired arm to express his gratefulness at your safe return, uttering a jarbled "see you in the morning." If you came in to let him know you were home during a nap, he would most likely be seen walking through the kitchen several minutes later with a disgruntled scowl on his face. We learned really quickly never to wake him up during the middle of the day, and more so learned to wait at least twenty minutes after he had woken up to ask him any sort of question. questions were not allowed after nap time.

It seemed that whenever he would go down for a nap, the wind would start to howl outside. The avocado and oak trees in the front yard used to be a lot taller and they would be dancing all over the place. Even though I would have liked to maybe watch Ninja Turtles during nap time (or quiet time, as it came to be called because Dad got tired of trying to make us take naps), I sure as hell didn't want to go outside. It was as though he had this innate sense, an internal clock triggered by the changing pressure systems outside, as if his paternal instinct was protecting us from getting blown away.

So he would take naps and we would become a little more literate. He loved being asleep, but it was always better when he was awake because we could listen to Ray Charles or Bob Marley and slide across the wooden floors in our socks and play Chinese Checkers or chess and make sandwiches and run through the sprinklers and pick avocados and and and.

The guy was the real deal.