Bad Dreams...
Last night I had a nightmare that the world had been overrun by angry man-eating dinosaurs. Wave after wave of bigger and bigger dino-monsters ran over the land killing every person they ran into. Sounds like a really bad horror flick from the '70's, doesn't it? That's because the one thing about the dream that I cannot relate to you is the terror I felt when it woke me up in the dead of night.
The dream itself is kind of silly. We went to a birthday party yesterday for Ed's 5 year-old cousin and the dinosaurs were not in short supply. I'm pretty sure this is how they ended up in my dreams. So how did I take a cute little plastic dinosaur from a birthday party and turn it into the end of humanity? I have a very vivid imagination. And I have very real fears.
The couple of weeks following Tommy's birth, I was a basket case. I know this is completely normal, especially for a first-time mom. I had almost no sleep, my body had been through a difficult ordeal, and I had this little baby depending on me for everything it needed to stay alive and healthy. But there was more to it than that. The day we brought Thomas home from the hospital, I barely recognized the world going by outside of our car. It was as if my whole life had been in black and white, and now I could finally see the color. It was dazzling, breathtaking, and it was completely terrifying.
Now that I am a mom, I know fear in a way that I never wanted to know it. The world is an unpredictable and terrifying place where people do things to hurt each other that you and I could never imagine that anyone could do, and yet they are done. I feel so helpless sometimes. That is how I felt lying in bed after waking up from my dream. We are so vulnerable, so soft, just lying here under the sky. In my half-awake state I wanted to take my baby and my husband and hide us away some where safe. But where?
Today in a land very far away from here there is a mother who is mourning the death of her child. I know it, I can feel it. Our troops are bombing and moving into a city where people live, where a child is just learning to talk, or needs his diaper changed, or wants a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, or a nap, or to touch his mother's hair. There are no dinosaurs in that city, only the reality of guns and bombs and hatred. The reality of nowhere to hide.
I do not want to think about these things, but my dreams won't let me pretend they are not there. I will not raise my child to be fearful. I will carry that burden for him as long as I can. Probably until he is a parent, when he too will understand the fear that no one has to teach us. The fear for the safety of your child. I hope to God that this war we are fighting is just, if there is such a thing as a just war. I hope it creates a democracy in Iraq, I hope in the end it makes the world a more peaceful place. I hope wars stay far enough away from us that I don't ever have to wonder if my child's life is worth the fight.
I pray to God for the parents and children of Fullujah, of Sudan, of Ivory Coast, of Russia, of Chechneya, of wherever the fighting and the horror is going on today. This is the bond of humanity that crosses all cultural barriers. May your children be safe with you tonight.
posted by ErinMary @ 3:13 PM
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