This morning I came awake in the pre-dawn hours with the very grateful awareness that “It was only a dream.” I really hate dreams that require me to get out of bed and check on the well being of the children. I hate the way they stick in my head all the next day haunting me as if they had actually happened. Feelings linger regardless of the unreality of their source.
I intended this morning to take extra time to just love my children. I wanted to savor the fact that I have them and that they are all healthy. I wanted to enjoy their unique irreplaceable personalities. What a joy and a miracle it is that I have them. Instead we were all caught up in the pre-school hustle complete with Patches-damage to Kiki-beloved items and an infuriating broken zipper. I was steaming mad when we drove away from the house. I’d calmed down enough by the time we arrived at school that I apologized for yelling and wished Kiki and Link a good day. It wasn’t until I drove away from the school, leaving them behind, that I remembered how I wanted this morning to go. Then I cried.
I know that I’ll see them after school. After school I’ll get the chance to hug them and love them and enjoy being with them. But my dream looms in my brain with a shadowy persistent “What if”. So many chances of happiness are lost because I allow small things to interfere. Tragedy may never occur, but that doesn’t change the fact that this morning’s chance for happiness is gone.
I’ve had those dreams. It’s even worse when the ways people die don’t even make sense (they got too close to the Weber and got instantly incinerated, or pricked their finger on the track of a rollercoaster, got aids, and died instantly… random crap like that. both of those happened in the same dream, even), but you still wake up in a cold sweat and have to go check to see they’re still there.
::hugs::
Vorn
This morning’s chance may be gone, but you still have time to give your children extra love. I’ve learned through helping with Bookworm’s (and mine by “adoption”) nieces that every minute with or without them counts. I may not see my nephew very often, but when I call, I make sure to talk with him and let him know that I love him. In fact, he still asks about when he’s going to see “Uncle” Ryan again.
For me, sometimes it’s not even a dream, just a mental image or a feeling I get as I or my husband leaves the house… and I catch myself wondering during the day if it will come to pass. Only once has that mental image come true, so you’d think I’d know better than to worry about it, but no… that one time it did come true keeps my brain in a “Well, it happened ONCE!” loop. *sigh*
What I try to reassure myself with is that they know I love them (at least as much as a 22 and 3 month old can) despite my personality quirks and patience failings, and that on balance I try to be more positive than negative. From what I see of your posts, you too try to be more positive than negative… and that you remember to TRY to create happiness with your family speaks volumes to them, and they’ll remember that when they’re older.
For me it is worse when the event is plausible. I find those much harder to shake off.
Just an update for anyone who cares:
It was a long day. I managed to snatch a nap which helped. What helped most was playing with my kids as we did the Wednesday Afternoon Activity Runaround. There was still some post-traumatic-dream stress which contributed to some tired and frustrated moments. But mostly the afternoon was happy.
Especially the parts with the van splashing through huge puddles while the kids cheered. See. I’m a good mommy. My mom would NEVER drive through puddles on purpose no matter how much I begged. Now I get to drive. Albertson’s parking lot has GREAT puddles.
It rains a lot in Syracuse, where I grew up. We couldn’t avoid driving through puddles. But what I liked… no, what I loved… was when someone traveling the opposite way would hit a huge puddle just as we were about to pass them.
Obviously, the math here is fuzzy and estimated and it comes from a somewhat non-scientific-fact mind, but the way I saw it was: our car is doing roughly 40 mph. Their car is doing roughly 40 mph. The splash from the puddle is therefore approaching the windshield at approximately 80 mph (relatively speaking)*…
The sight and sound of a wall of water hitting the windshield at 80 mph and being easily dispelled… for some reason, I love that. Maybe because I’m scared of (massive amounts of) water and it felt like I had a forcefield. Maybe it was just the percussive nature of it. Whatever.
My mom wouldn’t try to do it, but she couldn’t avoid it on the way home from work. I loved it.
I forgot my footnote.
*I am aware that my calculations are based on incorrect premises. Those are the assumptions that I had as a teenager. Now, I am aware that the force with which the puddle water hit the windshield was affected by the trajectory of the water from the ground, which was affected by the wave pattern created by the force of the tire entering the puddle, which is only partially influenced by the speed of the vehicle and partially by the distributed mass or something like that, and that I, frankly, don’t have the skills to calculate even a reasonable approximation of the velocity of the drops that hit the windshield.
But it was frickin’ cool.
I don’t remember begging my Mom to drive through puddles. But I remember the joyful look on my husband’s face as he spontaneously plowed through eighteen inches of storm-runoff water in an underpass. Our son loved seeing the Exodisian walls-of-water outside his window, and I have to admit I did, too. Life is at its best when the kid inside busts out…
I think driving through puddles scared Mom. She’s always been a cautious driver.