It wasn't the first dream he'd had about their baby, but this one seemed so real!
43. Mister’s Dream (Guest Post, July 2013)
They had just returned from Alaska
The beginning of the dream was unimportant and irrelevant
Mister thought. After all, who really cares if he had a confused video chat
with a friend in Michigan Colorado
He had just come inside when he heard the baby crying
(screaming really), and he ran, worried, into the room to take care of the
child (thinking that his time to change a diaper for the first time had finally
come). But when he entered the room, he found her standing there with a red
face and red eyes. Being a dream, it did not strike mister as odd that the
child was a girl, or that she was standing,
even though she was less than two weeks old. But so she was.
As he went to pick her up she said clearly, “Hot! No,
Thank You!” Now, this did stun
Mister. His daughter had said her first words! And she was less than a month
old! Amazing! Well, luckily Mister’s hands were cold (a surprising boon that
Kate often appreciated) and he was able to sooth and calm the child as he
picked her up. He gently danced with her to and took her into the main room.
Jubilant and proud of his daughter, Mister exclaimed to the
first person he encountered, “She said her first words, plural! Can you believe
it?” The fellow did not, in fact,
believe it. So Mister asked his daughter to say those words again and, in
typical baby rebellion, she just stared at him. But Mister was not deterred,
being fully confident in what he had heard. So he started putting her on the
floor, a place she most decidedly did not want to be. At first she started
fussing but then she said, somewhat intelligibly “No.” “There you see?!” said
Mister, “She said ‘no’! And before, she clearly said four different words! I
was prepared for her not to speak for a year or even longer; but here she is a
couple weeks old, standing and speaking multiple words!” His friend didn’t deny
that he had heard something.
Mister, at this point, was ecstatic—not just about the
fact that his daughter was talking, but that she was intelligent and could
understand him. The combined relief from not having to change her diaper and
the pure joy of being able to calm the child and carry her in his arms, he wondered
if it was real. “Am I dreaming?” he asked rhetorically. He turned to his
mother-in-law, Laurie, but she just smiled, shook her head, and faintly said “No.”
At that, Mister turned and walked to the windows with his
daughter to show her what mountains were. His
girl was talking and showing other signs of awareness. And she hadn’t actually
been due to be born for a week and a half. Wait,
he thought, this means that I can go to
Glenn’s wedding without any worries. In fact, Kate and the baby could have gone
with me too if we had known she was going to be born so early and develop so
quickly. But then he caught Laurie’s voice drifting out of the kitchen, “I
didn’t have the heart to tell him...” To tell him what?
The unreality of his surroundings and circumstances began
to dawn on him. He turned to Laurie and said, “I am dreaming aren’t I?” Laurie reluctantly assented, “Yes, you are
definitely dreaming.” The pieces started fitting together. Who ever heard of a
two-week old baby talking? Not to mention a two week old baby who was still a
week and a half from her due date! And wait a second, why was it a girl?! The
sonogram had clearly shown that they
were going to have a boy! Oh well,
thought Mister good-naturedly, it is a dream after all. But what a wonderful dream! I don’t feel the same ecstasy as before,
but I still feel joy at holding a child in my arms and knowing that soon I will
hold another child in my arms in reality; even if he won’t be speaking to me
any time soon.
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