I had a dream that I lost little Gabriel, only he was somehow also Moses. We were at a medical appointment at a hospital. He was with me in the lobby, and then he wasn’t. I heard his little voice cry out, “Mama”, but just once. I looked and looked, but I had lost him. At some point, I had left the hospital, without my little boy. I was the very apologetic backseat passenger in the vehicle of an athletic coach of some sort and his child. My eyes would not open, though I was awake. I knew I had to get back to the hospital; that was the only chance I had to find Gabriel. I thought of his sunny curls and of how frightened he must be. Why had no one called me? Who was taking care of him?
I have been dreaming hard lately, waking to remember only what I hope were the most unsettling parts of the midsummer nights’ reveries. If we dream our fears, I should be scared.
At two or three in the morning, when my mind’s chaos had quieted, I woke to a small, gravelly voice. “Piece of crap. You’re a piece of crap…” I waited, having learned through vast experience that little beings might return to sleep if the house remains otherwise quiet in the dark of night. Sometimes, though, they speak again.
“Chocolate milk…” came the same voice, an hour later, a bit more intentional this time, and coming from the mouth of a tiny boy standing one inch away from my head. I had two choices at that point: I could creak down the stairs on tired legs to pour a cup of chocolate milk, or I could forget about anyone in the house getting any rest at all until sunrise. He’s persistent, that little one.
“I hate you, Mom,” he said as he reached for the cup through the shadows of the bottom bunk. After a few swallows he handed me the cup and, thankfully, returned to sleep, or at least to quiet.
Two nights in a row, I had served chocolate milk when they should have been sleeping.
Two days in a row, I had been called “stupid” by two different children, both mine. I could have retorted that I graduated fourth in my high school class of three hundred nineteen, but they would have leveled me with some sort of remark that, indeed, proved their points, and that I also knew had absolutely nothing to do with me.
I wear a mask to keep others from catching the bad things that may come from within. I can’t keep the anger from coming from the mouths of my hurt children, nor would I want to do this. Curiously, though, the youngest here wear their virus masks like champs.
We painted at the kitchen table as we often do during these long days at home. Moses called his artwork “a piece of crap.” Perhaps he didn’t think it measured up to that of his older siblings. He didn’t seem comforted when I told him how beautiful I thought it was, nor does he seem comforted when I tell him how beautiful I think he is when he has declared himself a “stupid piece of crap.”
Sometimes I feel like I am losing little Moses, to the depths of chaos here at home, to the familiar yet unslayable beast of mental illness as his childhood spins out of control. We can’t cover it up with a mask or otherwise. We have good people, and we hope that we are doing the right thing.
I don’t know if I ever found little Gabriel in my dream; I am not sure if he was really lost or if he was just away for a time when I had no control, no way to know. And I have no idea who that athletic coach was or how I got in his van, by the way.
In the end, I believe Moses will be okay, too. I believe that we all will be. We have our masks to wear and our collective wrath to unleash. The uncertainty of the darkness through the long wakeful nights always yields to the sunrise, which reminds us of the greater rhythm. And for those up before the sun, there’s always chocolate milk to make it better. I can hear your voice.
I have been dreaming hard lately, waking to remember only what I hope were the most unsettling parts of the midsummer nights’ reveries. If we dream our fears, I should be scared.