Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Tuesday's Tears - Bad Dreams

Last night had a tendency to run a bit scary for our family.  Usually nights are quiet around our home, but last night (the sleeping hours) proved eventful and not necesarily on the fun side.  Bad dreams and near death experiences are no fun.

I finally got to bed around 11:30 last night.  I spent a little time thinking about how pre-kids even with school I used to be able to get to bed around 10 and 10:30-11 bedtimes would be either a night with a lot of homework or a night where I was "bad" and stayed up too late to watch a tv show.  But generally the bedtime would be 10pm.  After I had my son bedtime became 11pm - that's how his schedule worked.  It didn't make much sense for me to go to bed earlier than that.  Our new norm was 11 for a year or so until I worked him down to going to bed earlier, like 9:30 or 10, at which point I started homework at 10 but still hit the pillow at about 10:30.  Nowadays I almost never go to bed before 11.  I find that pretty crazy, particularly because I haven't done schoolwork in a while.

Wow - I surely digress.

So - bed at  11:30.  at about 12:15 I was woken up by screaming in the house - my son was desperately calling out to me from the top of the stairs.  The space between that spot and my pillos includes a big expansive space.  That and the fact that I was sound asleep attests to how blood curdling these screams were.  Despite my sore legs from running in the marathon last week, I ran right out of bed and up the stairs to scoop him up and save him.

He was shaking.  He'd had a nightmare.  I didn't ask him what happened in the dream because he was obviously so shaken up about it.  I just picked him up and cuddled him - walking him right down to bed.  Whatever it was it was bad.  Poor guy. 

Later in the morning I had a bad dream as well.  Due to the narcolepsy, I can pretty much remember all of my dreams and they have an amazing sense of feeling very real.  This one was bad - someone was chasing mie intent on shooting and killing mie. I was running and hiding but this person kept at it.  Eventually (knowing it was a dream) I woke myself up to see that it was close to the time my hubby would be getting home.

I must have fallen asleep because he did not arrive at home on-time last night.  Instead he was about 1 1/2 hours late.  I woke up when he kissed mie good night and he pointed out he was home late. 

Then he said he'd almost died.

I asked the story - he said a drunk driver ran into a car that had just pulled into the spot he was standing in and so he almost died.  It didn't make much sense at the time in my half-sleep stupor but he was quite shaken up about it, I could tell.  When we were both awake he explained the story a bit more and it did make more sense.  It also made him work late.

What a dark shadow it cast on the night last night as all of us but Little Miss experienced some type of horror.  Even as I was half-asleep I was quite aware of how odd that was.

Thankfully though whatever was going through my little guy's head was just a dream - not reality.  My dream felt real but thankfully was not.  My husband was protected and came home safe and sound, just as we'd intentionally prayed for before my son went to sleep originally.  I'm grateful for that.

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