Happiness is as simple as an outdoor nap

By MARY JANE HOLT
Contributing Writer

I did it. I've wanted to do it forever. The opportunity just never had presented itself.

I've seen magazine articles and home decorating shows where bedrooms were actually set up on covered porches. In one article, the bed was out in the yard! The one in the open air would not have worked for me because the whole point of it all, as far as I'm concerned, is to be able to sleep in a storm with rain falling down just inches from where you are laying, with the mist spraying your body.

I've bought tapes and CDs with the water sounds on them that are designed to lull me to sleep at night in my bed. They are not bad, but just this week I think I might have experienced mindfulness for the first time, if mindfulness means being in the moment with all you have to give to or get from it.

That's how it was on Monday evening.

I had returned around mid-afternoon from an overnight stay at Piedmont Hospital for a sleep study, in which I did not sleep, although I was assured that I did, and that I dreamed really well. I know what good sleep is and I know what it ain't. I did not sleep well. I felt like I was in a state of constant dozing all night, in that kind of twilight zone that beckons just after we doze and just before we awake where we are semi aware of everything around us yet we still dream. Like a first night in a hotel room. You know what I mean.

So I return home. It's pushing 3 p.m. I'm totally off tea and sugar. No caffeine, and nothing sweet for more than two weeks. (Yep, it's been murder!). I'm wiped out. Very tired. Sleepy. Very sleepy. I walk in the house, put my things away, and hear thunder in the distance. I head for the front porch.

Now, my front porch is really too narrow for lounge chairs; it's a rocking chair porch. But last weekend I pulled a lounge chair out of the garage and set it up on the front porch. Actually I set two out there. Two rockers at either end of the porch and two lounge chairs on either side of the front door. I tried it out. I put the perfect pillows in it. I tested again. I know I'm ready.

And then it happened. Bone tired. Wiped out. Thunder rolls. I make a beeline for the porch. I lay down in my chair, plump up my pillows just right. Hop back up and get a light jacket just in case I get chilled. Settle in again.

My hubby decides to sit in the rocker to my right and thinks we are going to have a conversation. Talk about mindfulness!

When that rain began to fall, I went with It. I totally tuned him out. I quickly lost myself in the fine cool mist that was spraying my entire body. I was glad I had gotten the jacket. I pulled it up around my shoulders, snuggled deep into my pillows and in a few short minutes I was gone. So gone.

The rain fell only inches from me. I slept. Total peace!

I recall a house we lived in when I was around 14 that had a screened front porch. Sometimes I would sit out there and let the rain spray me through the screen, but lounge chairs were never in my folk's budget. In fact we had no porch furniture. So that was as close as I ever came to almost sleeping comfortably in the rain like I did Monday.

I know it sounds so simple. Like something we could do anytime. No big deal, right? Wrong. I turned 55 last month, have wanted to do it all my life. Monday was my first time.

Will I do it again? You better bet! The wind is blowing even now as I write this. I only hope I get finished with this column before the sky grows dark and the thunder calls my name. I have had my first lesson, and a most exquisite one at that, in practicing true rain-soaked mindfulness. Nothing, and I do mean nothing, messed with my mind while I laid in that spray and let my cares melt away with the falling rain. Happiness may be a lot cheaper than we think.