Watching: The changeable sky. Early this morning it was cloud-filled with only small hints of blue sky through ragged holes in the clouds. When the twins and I took our walk at 11 a.m., there was not a cloud in the sky. But by 5:30 p.m., dark, low-hanging clouds filled the sky again, promising rain. We only had a brief shower, however.

Background courtesy of
Ace of Space

Perchance to Dream

Tab woke me up in the middle of the night, yelling and scuffling in the throes of a bad dream. Though he hasn't had one in quite awhile, he is prone to nightmares, which cause him to scream loudly in his sleep. Sometimes he even starts fighting with his dream foes, and on more than one occasion, I have been the unintended victim. There are few more disagreeable ways of being awakened from a sound sleep than by having an elbow jammed into one's breastbone, as happened to me on one occasion.

I sat straight up in bed, crying. "Whattsa matter?" asked Tab, still sleep-fogged.

"You hit me!"

"No, I didn't. There was a ninja who jumped down out of a tree behind me, and I jabbed him with my elbow like this," he said, demonstrating the blow.

"That was me!"

He was very sorry and upset about what he had done once he awakened fully and realized what had happened.

Tab usually has nightmares when he is tired and overstressed, so I'm not surprised he had one this week before our trip to Maine. He's been having nightmares all his life; even the best man at our wedding, Tab's closest childhood friend, joked about it in his speech at the reception. I didn't find it very funny, however. I was already worried about the possibility of Tab's having a nightmare in one of the little inns or bed and breakfast establishments in which we would be staying during our honeymoon in Virginia. I could just imagine startled innkeepers awakened by terrified shrieks and shouts of "NO!" and "Stop it!" emanating from the bridal suite.

"What is that bride doing to her poor husband in there?" they would wonder.

As a matter of fact, Tab did have a nightmare during our honeymoon, in a bed and breakfast in Charlottesville, Virginia. I awoke from a sound sleep as soon as I heard him starting to moan (moans are usually his prelude to a loud scream), and I immediately clapped my hand over his mouth to stifle the noise. Fortunately, he did wake up right away, but he's not always easy to awaken when he's having a nightmare. If I try to shake him awake, he starts yelling louder because, in his dream, it is the monster he's facing that is shaking him.

I don't usually have nightmares, though occasionally I have disconcerting dreams. When I was between my first and second semester of my junior year in college, I had the same dream seven times in four weeks: I dreamed it was the first day of the new semester and I couldn't find my classrooms. I knew exactly why I was having this dream: it was a time in my life when I was trying to decide whether or not I should go to grad school. I was feeling lost and lacking direction, and these feelings were showing up in my dreams.

Still, knowing the cause didn't make the dreams any less ominous. To this day, whenever I'm facing a decision or a stressful time, I will dream that I am back in college and can't find my way around the campus. It is strange that my psyche chooses that location for these dreams of unease because, in reality, I loved Wellesley and always felt at home there.

Only one of our boys has inherited Tab's tendency toward bad dreams. Occasionally Matthew will wake up crying in the middle of the night. I stroke his sweaty head and soothe him back to sleep. I tell him that it was just a dream, that everything is OK. "OK," he repeats.

"Lie down, now, and go to sleep."

And he does.

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