Two-Part Invention

Paul has been gone since the middle of last week on an 11 day trip and Baby, that is a looooooong time. Things have been going very well with me and my colleagues. Our success must be attributed to God’s faithfulness, the power of prayer, two Grandmas willing to take a child or two and frequent trips to the fitness center.

I have not been getting the best rest as I have allowed the children to bunk with me. My sister, Torey, thought this absolute folly, “What! You are letting them sleep with you?”

“Well, Christopher makes a little bed on the floor and I only let them in one kid a night…except for one, I mean, two nights I slept with both the girls.”

“OK, you need to run these sorts of things by me. You need to call me and say, ‘I was thinking about letting the kids sleep in my room. What do you think?’ And I would say, ‘Are these the same kids that you take care of all day? The kids whose father is on the other side of the world? The kids you homeschool? The kids you NEVER get away from? Those kids?’ And then you would say, ‘Yes.’ and I would say, “Huh uh. No. NOT a good idea.'”

I see her point and would probably be able to enforce it – from Canada – but here, at night, facing a plaintive little face I get a wee bit squishy. As a result my sleep has been even lighter than normal and filled with crazy dreams.

One night my dreams, nightmares, really, were all about Paul. It was one of those series of dreams where scenarios rapidly change – one moment we were married with children and the next we were only dating and about to break up and then the next, married again. The only consistent thing was that Paul was a very bad man. At one point I saw him beaking at another girl and told, myself, “Don’t say anything, just pretend you didn’t notice.” (Clearly not reality on both counts!) Eventually I did say something in a meek and hesitant way (see: parenthesis above) and he lashed out accusing me of being demanding and unreasonable. The next second I was alone crying and worrying that we were going to break up. Hello!

In the past I would hold Paul’s behavior in my dreams against him when I awoke. He found this infuriating and would become impatient and angry. “But I didn’t…..(whatever treacherous thing I had dreamt)!” I always thought he was making excuses and would go into a huff. Amazingly enough, I considered myself a mature and insightful woman at the time.

This week, when I awoke from this series of nightmares I knew they were the result of Paul’s absence and the pinwheel-like sleeping habits of my toddler bedmate. I knew my dreams were not reality. I knew that Paul is not disrespectful and abusive, that I am not a cowering wimp and yet I felt a little sad and was really eager to talk to him

When he called that morning I told him the highlights. We laughed about the ridiculousness of some of the scenes and then a child asked to talk and then another and then the third and by the time I got the phone back he needed to get going.

“But we need to make things right!”

“What’s that?”

“Your terrible behavior in my dreams.”

“Oh…well…it sounds like I was being a total jerk and I’m sorry you went through all that.”

I exhaled dramatically. “Thank you, ” I said in a small voice.

And then we both started laughing.

“Now don’t you wish you had done that years ago? Think of all the stress we would have been saved.”

“Alot.”

Still laughing we exchanged declarations of love and longing and then I hung up the phone.