Dream On

I'm one of those really tormented fortunate people that remembers their dreams almost nightly.  Joel will be the first to tell you that this is more of a blessing than a curse because my crystal-clear mental pictures of him by night are not always positive, and the real life (yet equally stubborn) version of my husband gets to deal with the aftermath.

Joel, the morning of our actual wedding day, 2005.

Sunday morning I awoke to a very clear memory of a sleep-induced wedding to my husband during which he refused to wear a tux or suit and instead opted to wear a plaid flannel shirt and frayed cut-off jeans because "it would be funny".

Even in my dreams I question his taste.

But yesterday I learned that I'm not the only one with a vivid memory and apparently not the only one with active dreams.

"Mommy!  Last night I had this crazy dream."

"I had a dream that I was playing in our yard with a mountain lion.  Not in the yard in front of our house, but the yard in the back.  The part with the fence.  The backyard?  Yeah, the backyard.  And I was wrestling the mountain lion and it bammed me in the head but I didn't cry because I'm so tough.  So I bammed it back in the head and the mountain lion roared and then he hit me with his tail but it just tickled.  Then he tried to run away but he couldn't get out of the yard because of the fence.  That's how I know it was in the backyard because of the fence.  You know, the one in the backyard?  Mommy?  Mommy?  Mommy?  Mom!  Mommy?  So he couldn't jump over the fence and I pushed him really hard until he dug a hole in the ground like Oscar does and got under the fence and into the neighbor's yard.  And then I called the police on my cell phone.  My phone was real in my dream, Mommy!  And the police came and took you away because you let a mountain lion get in our yard."

"That's a horrible dream, Cael!  But I'm glad no one got hurt."

"I hads a dream too, Mommy!"

"Yeah, Graham?  What was it?"

"I had a dream about Cael."

"And what happened?"

"Nothing.  He was just Cael.  It was so scary."

With the way those boys treat each other, I'm not surprised that Graham's dream turned into a nightmare.  But to really strike fear in his heart, Cael would have had to be dressed in a plaid flannel shirt and frayed, cut-off jeans...