One man's nightmare is another man's reality

I've been having more bad dreams recently. It happens mostly when I'm awakened an hour or so before my usual rising time, during the fitful sleep that comes after premature wake-up/before real wake-up. That half-awake state must breed strange, troubled thoughts. And why do I keep waking up prior to the genuine wake-up? Well, I might have touched on one canine reason here. It also does not help that stupid, rule-breaking *@!?*&# Verizon borders our backyard and sometimes decides to off-load trucks around 5am. Plus there's our neighbor down the street who owns a car repair shop and has a nasty habit of "un-muffling" antique trucks and then switching around the business's classic-car license plates so he can take turns driving all of said trucks to and from the repair shop and home again. (He gets up at the crack of dawn—did I mention that?!)

Oh my, I'd better change the subject or you might think that all these factors cause me stress. How silly! Of course I love all my neighbors. Just like you do. Right?

Anyway. Bad dreams. The one that's sticking in my head most was from several nights ago. In that fitful, almost daylight hour of trying to fall back to sleep, my semi-conscious mind took me to work in a high-rise building downtown. There had been terror threats recently, and we were all gathered in a large room for a meeting, and the woman in charge was explaining there was nothing to worry about. And then, in my dream, the building lurched and the woman nearly lost her balance. We all did. It was a big lurch, as if something had exploded below us.

At that point the dream became rather unrealistic—because amidst the screams and shouts, the whole room tilted, as if the building had been struck with such force that the top of it had been knocked off. I could feel the entire room falling sideways; it was like we were in the top of one of my son's Lego structures that had been hit from the side until the upper portion flew off and landed on the ground. Except in my dream, we were falling in what felt like slow motion; we all had far too much time to process what was happening. Also, strangely (because it was a dream), no one had been knocked of his feet even though the entire room was tilted on its side and we were hurtling toward the ground below. That was handy, because since we were falling in slow-mo, and since miraculously none of us had fallen down, I had sufficient time to remember that I should make arrangements for someone else to meet my son's bus. I was preparing to dial my cell phone in the dream when I woke up.

I was very relieved to wake up. Albeit completely unrepresentative of the conscious laws of physics, the dream was disturbing. Mostly, it disturbed me because in my dream, I had not known whom to call. Now, in reality, I do know whom to call. We have a couple of options, neighbors and various relatives. Still, the whole thing got me thinking: What if I have a heart attack during the day? What if I'm involved in a bad car accident while my son's in school? What if I'm at a temp job downtown and a crazy person does a terrible thing to a building there? My building?

I know we don't like to think about this stuff. But it happens. A lady at my church lost her husband, younger than I am, because he suffered a brain aneurysm at home while caring for their children. The little kids sat next to his unconscious body for over an hour before anyone checked on them...and even then, people only checked because the wife had a weird feeling while at work. One of my son's schoolmates became father-less last year because the fellow fell from a building he was working on. Horrible as it is to consider, I am certain that there were at least a few kids waiting for a parent after the 9/11 tragedy. There had to be at least a handful of situations where the child was left without a back-up plan for a couple of hours or so. Don't you think? When that many people vanish in our busy and over-committed world, the ripples go out a long ways and affect many people.

It's scary. It gives me nightmares (literally). I can tell my child whom to find in an emergency, how to call 911—I can write down crucial information and stow it in back-packs, in wallets. But if he leaves the pack at school? No help. If I'm in a fiery crash and my purse and phone burn up? My careful preparations are ashes.

The whole thing gives me the heebie-jeebies and makes me short of breath. I guess I'll just have to make whatever plans I can, and pray that God protects my loved ones. (Would it be wrong to pray that the stupid pre-dawn disruptions cease, so I don't wake up, then try to sleep once more and have nightmares instead?)

By the dawn's early light

I am unfortunate in that I am a light sleeper. All my life, I can recall being awakened by various sounds in the wee hours. As a child, it was traffic, mostly. Although we lived in a rural setting, the house sat next to a busy state route, which happened to be the main thoroughfare for a couple of large truck operations—lucky us. We were especially lucky during those summers when a lusty big bull occupied the empty field across the road from my bedroom window. My goodness, but that bull did have a determined note in his voice when he bellowed in the wee morning hours.

Moving out of that house brought no peace. Dorm life followed (as if that existence could ever bring peace, unless you were foolish enough to remain in the structure over a minor holiday weekend). And then, off-campus life brought new neighbors within the confines of an old, sound-unproofed house: a deaf old lady who loved her television loud, and a foolish bunch of party hounds whose best schoolwork happened drunkenly and vociferously very late at night, directly over my apartment ceiling.

The best years of sleep might have been during my years of teaching. I was blessed with relatively quiet rentals where neighbors weren't home often or made little to no sounds. However, rest was still marred by all the bad dreams that I had. Each one featured an increasingly less obedient classroom, and by the time I had thrown in the towel, my chaotic subconscious had rendered the dreams almost unbearable in their lack of closure and control.

I moved back to Pittsburgh to a very cheap rental that was a unit in an old hotel of sorts. The building was U-shaped, with all the "front" windows of apartments opening onto a center parking lot. That place was annoying in that my early morning hours on hot nights brought me out of a sound sleep, awakened by the noise and the noxious odor of someone grilling hot dogs in the parking lot. The apartment after that one? A lovely, restful third story—which just happened to be situated next to a busy stop light in which various air-braked vehicles came first to a screeching halt, then to a grinding, groaning acceleration when the stop light once again permitted them to advance. To top it off, the light featured a bus stop. Some a**hole woke me at 6 or so one morning, singing aloud the few lyrics he knew from the movie Dirty Dancing; "I...had...the time of my life...and I owe it all to youuuuuu..." Over. And over. And over. The bus finally picked him up, not before I'd imagined a few little times of my own life which may or may not have involved hurting that guy.

My first married apartment? On a city street in a no-school-bus district, where loud little children traipsed up the sidewalk shouting at each other directly under our front windows. The next residence, our first purchased home? Why, on a dead-end road leading to an illegal residual waste holding station, for which waste arrived and left in large metal dumpsters... Did I mention that the road was very dilapidated and the trucks and their loads bounced when they hit those bumps at 5:00am?

So now we're in this house, and Verizon sits at our back, another illegal operation which was only supposed to house offices, not trucks and supplies—and which now stores bucket vehicles, treated poles, and immense spools of every type of wire you can imagine. They love to back up their vehicles at 4:30 and 5 in the morning. "Beep, beep, beep." During snowy mornings, those Verizon folks are so on top of things that they plow and scrape the sidewalk, loudly, before dawn. And don't forget the barking dog down the street, the canine squeak toy that I already moaned about here. Apparently, his bladder is tiny. Stupid dog.

I've announced over and over that the next house will be AWAY. I will not agree to another home/property purchase until there's the promise that I'll neither hear nor see another human being. But in this general area of the world, is that possible? Realistic? Un-Christian of me? I just want a good night's sleep. And yet, will that require a soundproof room, so I can't hear my son stirring? Will a good night's sleep allow any wiggle room for being shaken awake by my night-owl husband coming to bed? My wakeful husband, whose solution is simply to blast a fan for white noise, which is what we do for my son. But I hate the fan. It dries out my eyes and nose. It makes me wake up coughing in the night. I feel so isolated when it's blurring my contact with the outside world, when I have to wonder whether I'd hear an intruder in our home or my child being sick in his bed sheets.

Is there a solution? An adequate escape? Has the whole world given up and is resting peacefully, albeit cough-fully, against the soundtrack of a loud fan?

It's the principle of the matter, really: I shouldn't need to block out the world to get some rest. And yet.

Unbearable sweetness

I continue to be plagued by nightmares about losing my son. It’s especially bad in the hours between 4am and 6am; I am awakened, sometimes by coughing child (caused by allergies) and other times by puking cat (caused by sheer catness). Once awakened, I have trouble falling back asleep—and when I’ve finally achieved a sleeping state once again, I inevitably find myself dreaming that my child is missing in some form or fashion.

Sometimes, he’s in a crowd of children and I can’t visually locate him. Other times, I’ve entrusted him to someone else’s care and they’ve let me down by allowing him to wander, or giving him permission to go with someone else I don’t know. Each time, I am frantic in the dream, searching, calling, running around like a crazy woman, and there are always other people in the dream who think I’m a worrywart and tell me I’m over-reacting…kind of like my waking life.

Where does this come from? I wonder if it’s normal, or if I am, indeed, obsessed.

And the dreams are so terrible because he is so innocent. In each unwaking scenario, he trusts the people he’s with, he has naively gone with strangers, he never ponders whether someone means him harm or doesn’t plan to protect him adequately. He has simply followed whomever because he can’t conceive of a person who wouldn’t be kind or mean him well—because he is usually that way. Isn’t everyone? (Sadly, no.)

I was bemoaning recently how I’d love to go shopping and blow some money, and we just didn’t have it to blow… and my sweet boy said, “Mommy, you can have the money from my piggy bank. Go shopping with that money.” Now, that amount of change is not likely to take me far, but how sweet that he offered—it’s all he had. Like the widow in the Bible parable, he was willing to give his all. Just so I could splurge on something.

And he is delighted by the simplest things. I was stringing beads on a rawhide string, and the kiddo saw me and wanted to participate. I gave him his own leather string and some beads, and he went to town, stringing away, carefully picking out the perfect piece each time, taking some off and replacing them, until finally, the work of art was completed and we tied it ‘round his neck. As if that wasn’t darling by itself, I offered to open the closet door so he could look into the full-length mirror inside and admire his handiwork. He was so pleased at his own reflection sporting the beads that he grinned, put his hands on his head, and scurried away laughing with glee.

This is the little boy that I must eventually send into the world. How can I do it? How can I not do it? I shudder at the thought of how the world will scar him. Applying a germ philosophy, he must be first exposed in order to earn immunity. I know that’s true; I know he must be exposed. I’d even like to hope that perhaps, just perhaps, his innocence can counter some of the evil floating around out there. But I know how vulnerable he is, how hungry “they” are to strip away that childlike nature and sense of wonder.

This watching-him-grow thing is going to be tougher than I thought.

Keeping it all in perspective

It’s Friday. That means garbage pick-up.

It sounds simple enough…but it’s not. We live on a relatively small street that shrinks to a single skinny lane before rolling downhill steeply and turning on a sharp, very square little bend. Our street is also located on the very edge of our township. That means, in most cases, that we are serviced absolutely first or absolutely last.

Our mail? We get it last. Our garbage? The giant vehicles break the dawn to come pick up our refuse and recyclables.

And because the road is so slim at its end point and has that sharp bend, the trucks cannot drive straight through our neighborhood and out the other side; they must treat it as if it were a dead end. Which means that either the trip down or the trip back up must happen with the trucks traveling backwards.

Have you heard these trucks back up? Just like every other huge service truck, they beep, loudly and obnoxiously, for the entire time they’re moving in reverse.

None of this would matter nearly as much if I didn’t have a preschooler who sleeps lighter than a hungry housecat. It would also matter significantly less if that kid were a lazy kid instead of a spry, energetic little sprite who detests rest of all kinds, at all times, and seeks any diversion to rise from his bed.

*********
The boy is having a nightmare in the early semi-darkness: “Mama, no Mama, I don’t want to go outside.” (Do I force my kid outside? Sometimes. Don’t you? Do yours have nightmares about it?)

I wait a bit, but when it continues I scurry over and pat the child, attempting to soothe him in his half-awake state. “You don’t have to go outside, Honey. It’s okay.” Murmur, murmur, pat, pat.

He begins to breathe deeply, taking in air with his typical snuffly little inhalations. I’m thinking that we’re home free, it’ll be okay. And then.

BEEP, BEEP, BEEP, BEEP. Oh, man. And to make matters worse, the recycle truck has shown up first for duty. Therefore, the beeps are punctuated by the repeated sounds of glass and metal being dumped into the side of a large metal bin aside the truck. A festival of clinks and clanks, to say the least. Not a lot of plastic in today’s offerings, from the sound of things.

The boy is awake again, tossing, turning, groaning. I repeat the patting and soothing, murmur some more, and he’s almost sleeping again. Maybe this’ll work.

And then, more beeping. I peek out the window. Oh gee. Here come the garbage men.

I give up. It’ll be an early day here, for everyone. But that’s okay, because all things considered, I’m pretty rich and blessed even at this hour: I have a sweet kid to soothe, he’s in his own room in our home, we have people to come pick up our smelly garbage and take it away, we have garbage for them to take because we actually have the luxury of being able to throw things away… And it’s a lovely morning, the coolest, most comfortable time of a hot day like the one that’s brewing.

Have fun counting your blessings.

Dream, dream dream dream

(Thanks to Chris H for causing me to ponder this subject.)

I don’t dream very often. Or, since every dream expert out there insists that we’re always dreaming while in deep sleep states, I suppose I should say that upon waking, I usually don’t recall my dreams. I don’t care, really—the dreams that I do remember are often unhappy ones. It’s sort of like my early childhood memories—the very earliest all center around injuries (that’s a subject for another blog post); similarly, the dreams that stick the most are the ones that frighten and occasionally disturb me.

You could look at a dream diary, if I kept one, and by many of the scary dream entries you’d be able to gauge pretty closely what was going on in my life. Not all—some of the dreams are just bizarre repeats—but some of them offer clues to my concerns at the time.

In childhood, I usually dreamed nonsensical stuff, probably trying to sort through all the strange, new thoughts and experiences one has a kid—except when I was sick. Then, I always dreamed the same odd thing: I was standing in a huge room, like a monstrous gymnasium, and it was completely empty except for me. And then, I’d become aware—not through any typical means like hearing footsteps or a door open or close, just through some innate sense—that there was someone else in the room. And then I’d see her; a tall woman, nondescript because she was so far away, standing all the way across the room on the opposite side. And she was just standing there, looking over at me. She wasn’t approaching me, or speaking, or gesticulating, or anything…just standing there. And I was always terrified. Why? What could be so frightening about that? But it was. I haven’t dreamed about that woman for many years now, and I don’t miss her.

No particular school-age dreams come to mind; I figure they were predictable and forgettable, the sorts of dreams you’d expect to spring from an immature, self-absorbed mind such as mine. My college dreams weren’t very memorable either, although that was the first time I lived alone, and I recall one repeat nightmare from that time span: I dreamt that I heard someone fumbling with the doorknob on my apartment, and when I went to see who it was, a rough-looking character I didn’t recognize was trying to force the lock. He asked if he could come in, and when I said no, he smiled evilly at me through the door’s window—and then punched through the glass, reached in, and admitted himself. That’s usually where I would wake up, heart thumping, gasping for breath, kicking myself once alert because the me in my dream had behaved like such a born victim, helpless, frozen, utterly astounded at his audacity. That dream came back again and again, on and off, depending on how safe I felt in my rented dwelling.

Once I began teaching school, that became the bad dream of the day—and the dream did not go away as years of teaching experience mounted under my belt. In every episode, my classroom was absolutely out of control, kids were running everywhere, screaming, talking, and not a soul was paying one whit of attention to me. That was mostly an annoying dream, not a nightmare, and thank God my real classroom never looked so chaotic (not quite…!) But it did leave me with a heavy, defeated feeling—especially when waking necessitated preparations for a day of school.

Working in an office caused the dreams to shift to “I didn’t get my project done and the client is coming!” scenarios. They had the same kind of theme as the teaching nightmares, but with a slightly different flavor of panic. I’m sure you can imagine them, my rushing to complete work, the resulting stammering conversations with my boss, the livid client, all in my own head, of course. But they certainly felt real.

A few times while pregnant, I dreamed I had the baby. I never knew the baby's sex, though, never even took a stab at guessing in my unconscious state. And I don’t consider those dreams to be nightmares, really—especially not in comparison to the reality of giving birth. (Don’t worry; that’s a post you’ll never see.)

And now, early yesterday morning, the dream that woke me with a start, heart pounding? What was it, you ask? I couldn’t find my little boy. In the dream, Todd was driving and made the decision to stop by at a picnic or party or something that we knew was going on. It was night, there were lots of people, I didn’t know most of them, and we all got separated. And I was running from group to group, first saying, “Marcus?” And then, when I didn’t find him, shouting frantically, “Marcus! Marcus, where are you?” When I did finally find him, a stranger called back to me, “He’s fine, he’s over here.” And I was so flooded with absolute relief. And frustration with myself that I’d allowed him out of my sight for even a second. Then, I was suddenly in the present, still feeling the physical effects of the absolute terror the dream had caused. And it was all better, for that moment at least; I listened carefully and I could hear my son breathing his nasally little breaths in the next room. He was safe.

I've dreamed of losing my child several times already; I’m sad to tell you that I suspect I’ll be having this nightmare for a long, long time. And it is, by far, the most frightening of all.