I took a nap yesterday.

It was a rich, spontaneous and indulgent nap, the late afternoon sun filling the sky with its yellow streamers that slid effortlessly in through the windows. I closed the curtains in the master bedroom, snuggled in next to Patrick and forgot my name for the better part of two hours.

We’re back at the market on Saturdays now, after taking the month of January off (a decision made by the market managers due to some indoor location issues that have now been resolved. A long story I can mention when we meet for coffee sometime). The winter market’s hours are shortened by one on the opening bell side of the schedule, giving vendors the chance to sleep in a bit longer or perhaps pack up product and equipment in the morning rather than in a fatigued Friday night after-work scramble. We take full advantage, leaving the house at 7:00a.m. hauling a more modest inventory and set-up load. Summer hours will come soon enough with an earlier departure time of 6:00a.m., and we don’t grumble about that at all. Year-round, our customers are generous, enthusiastic and eager to see what’s “on the table” as we say in our ads. In case you’re curious, we’re currently testing a new flavor we hope to roll out in June: Raspberry Lemonade. No extract, just pure, fresh lemon zest and juice paired with tart freeze-dried raspberries wrapped around a proprietary blend of oats and other stuff that’s good for you. In the trial runs, folks describe it as almost sippable.

But back to that nap, which Patrick and I chose after discussing other ways to spend our time (making art, cleaning out the upstairs guestroom, laundry. None of those was really a contender). Yesterday’s sharp and gusty winds were busy rearranging the landscape, making the loading and unloading of totes, folding tables, signage and Patrick’s little green wooden stool more physical than it would have been. Heads bowed and hands gloved, we set to it, thankful for the hand truck that holds everything in a tottering but manageable stack as we roll it across the parking lot asphalt and a couple of doorway thresholds into the mall where we all spread out our wares. Since I can’t squeeze in a morning walk on market days, I count this as a workout. Add another four hours of standing to that, plus tear-down and packing up, and you’ve got a hefty fitness routine to rival any of those fancy gym machines that take you nowhere. It’s a wonder we don’t nap every Saturday.

Market Saturday mornings have been woven into our schedules, either summer or winter or both, for going on six years now, with a strange and bumpy interruption during the initial months of pandemic lockdown. In those early days, we’d transport a few orders to the drive-through market set up, not even getting out of our car but handing over the bags to good-natured and hardy market volunteers, who stood in the cold or the rain to close the deal for our customers and everyone else’s. Scaled back, at times meager but always determined, this arrangement worked and eventually evolved into a newly shaped enterprise with all the usual safety protocols in place: masks required, vendors and customers six feet apart, bottles of hand sanitizer on every table. It became the new market Normal and we simply adjusted the straps on our previous expectations. Just like we did with air travel security after the 9/11 attacks. Or the walking paths along the banks of the creek after the first Great Flood we experienced on the land here. Sometimes, even waking up remembering I got a haircut the day before is a change I get to manage, if only because I use less shampoo and cut my time with the blow dryer by two minutes getting ready for work. Since change is the only reliable constant in our existence, from barely noticeable to life-disrupting, aren’t we required to embrace a new “normal” every day?

I do realize the scale of this latest shared pandemic event is different, the impact scarring and indelible for too many in its path. We’re all experimenting with what works to get us through a rough day, to not feel guilty about laughing or detaching ourselves if only for the afternoon. When tomorrow arrives, it will show us new strategies for coping, give us a new problem more tangled than the one we struggled with yesterday, and we’ll dig a little deeper in our toolkits until our hands grasp what we need. It will work or it won’t, and we’ll try something else. The wheel keeps turning.

I’ve decided to give up chasing normal (I thank my friend Rita for giving me that phrase, only she used the word “happy” instead of “normal”. An idea worth exploring, perhaps in a future reflection). I’m putting my heart and what little money I might have on a dogged pursuit of the familiar. It feels like less pressure on my psyche, to look for and find what’s friendly in a given moment, no matter how small or humble, rather than ache through the longing for what used to be however many weeks or years ago that won’t be coming back. I don’t fool myself, imagining a day when we toss our facemasks into the air like giddy college graduates, step into a world where the air we inhale is no longer tainted with COVID droplets and we run toward each other for a solid, full-body embrace. Just being at the winter market indoor location with others is a leap for me, and thanks to that winter storm a couple of weeks ago, the one that thinned out the crowds we usually have on a market day, I felt eased rather than plunged into our return. The smooth cold folding tables felt familiar in my hands as I popped the legs into place, unfurled the tablecloth and unpacked the mason jars filled with samples. Our first customers that day greeted us with cheer and gratitude for braving the elements to help them restock their pantries with Tropical, Maple Pecan and one of our new flavors, Lemon Blueberry Tahini. Their graciousness…more of that “familiar” I’m looking for. And finding.

I’m making note of the familiar that I’ve been carrying around since naps were mandatory for me: steaming oatmeal with apples and cinnamon, a body that does what I ask it to most days, having a soft throw draped over the back of the couch for when it gets chilly, forgiveness, integrity, meditative pauses, creativity, granola and the warmth of Patrick’s hand. In the face of the unexpected, the strange and the unsettling, any of these will take the edge off just for a moment.

I’m living for those moments.

A nap now and then doesn’t hurt either.