Poppy, upon entering Petey’s room this morning: Good morning, little brother! Did you have a good sleep?
Petey, standing in his crib, but still a bit groggy: Yeah.
Poppy: Did you have sweet dreams?
Pete: Yeah.
Poppy: What did you dream about?
Pete, who has never answered this question before, even though Poppy asks him almost every morning: Marshmallows.
Tag Archives: dreams
Go away, bad dream
Some mornings she gets up on her own, but this was one of those mornings that I had to get Poppy out of bed. Today she was awake, curled up under her sheet.
“Mommy,” she said, “I don’t feel so well,” and I wondered how long she’d been awake there, waiting for me.
“What’s wrong, honey?”
“The ants,” she said. “The ants keep hurting me.”
I wasn’t too alarmed about the ants. Had they been real ants, I would’ve heard her screaming. The girl doesn’t like bugs.
“What ants?” I asked.
“The black ants,” she said, “under my pillow.”
“Show me,” I said, sitting down on the bed. She lifted her head and looked at the pillow.
“Oh,” she said. She brightened. “There aren’t any ants!”
“Did you have a bad dream, baby?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “The ants were hurting me and they wouldn’t stop hurting me.”
I gave her a hug and told her, “The next time you have a yucky dream, you just tell the yucky part to go home and leave you alone.”
“And then the ants will go back to their mommies and daddies and grandmas and grandpas,” she said.
“That’s right. And then you can go back to your good sleep,” I said.
I wish I could make it so that she only has sweet dreams. This parenting thing can be hard on your heart.
Such stuff as dreams are made on
It’s one of those dreams that start in a sparsely attended, gaudy old movie theater. And then suddenly there’s a snake the size of a freight train, and everyone scatters, and it’s chasing you out toward the swimming pool. Then the swimming pool’s gone and you’re running down a gravel road and you look behind you. And it’s still there, only it’s not slithering so much as doing this horrible leaping thing like a rope being whipped about.
Then you’re in a tunnel. You’re in a tunnel, and you think you’ve lost the giant snake. And you’re relieved, momentarily. Until Zombie Shakespeare and his team of Zombie Actors stumble out of the dark, spouting iambic pentameter and coming right for you. You turn to run, and there at the other end of the tunnel? The giant snake. Loping again. Of course.
Then, blissfully, you wake up. You tell your husband, “I had a terrible dream about a giant snake and Zombie Shakespeare.” And he looks at you like you’re off your rocker.
And you wonder if maybe he’s on to something, there.