Dreaming and Nightmares

 I am a dreamer.

There, I have said it. I am a dreamer and a day dreamer and an all day long dreamer. Sometimes reality and dreams are so blurred one cannot be told from another.

Another thing - my dreams are vivid, entertaining, frightening and confusing in equal measure. Here is a documented example from years ago: Dream about an Object

The other thing about me is that I fall asleep in minutes, seconds even. This has been an historic tension in my marriage. As in, I say at the end of a long and meaningful conversation: 'I am off to sleep now' and he thinks I mean after more thought, a cuddle or additional thought. That is not what is meant - I mean: "in the next two minutes I will have left the waking world for the sleep of the just. Please re-direct all questions of clarification or concern to the morning."

That said, I am also a 'waker'. Years of waking for the boys and tending to their needs have set in a pattern of wakefulness. These days I tend just to listen to them sleeping, but wake to do so several times a night. Reassured, I direct my thoughts to prayers of protection (St Michael Archangel, defend us in battle..etc) and return to sleep. I quite like it.

It is in dreams that my mind appears to come alive. I sometimes narrate my dreams to my classes - particularly if they are in them. I am claustrophobic and was timetabled to teach one Year 10 group in a room with no windows, only skylights. I had a repetitive dream that we redesigned that room to an ideal classroom with a piano, a veranda, a tree growing through the skylight, drawing boards and a pet pangolin that lived with us. Dreams often work out the stress of the day. My class and I made this dream come alive by telling and re-retelling it until the day they left and brought an illustration of their own imagined 'English Classroom', pangolin included. More recently, I woke and recounted the dream in which we mounted the beehive by the window inside the boys bedroom. Eldest was delighted and counted all the insects whizzing in and out, documenting their activities and observing their honey making. Youngest was horrified as the hive was over his bed and he could not sleep for all the buzzing. A great apple tree grew through the bedroom and moulded with the beams and squirrels ran up and down, dancing chirruping mischievously after bedtime.

I have always been a sleeper. These days I wake early and want to rise and shine in a way I never used to. I suspect I need the peaceful moment of the day. I treasure wakeful moments in the early hours of the night and in the morning. I remember the peaceful moments nursing a babe whilst everyone else slept; genuinely, I treasure those moments now gone from me. I plan the day ahead. I pray.If I get scared of nothing, and that happens too - not slugs, more often serial killers or axe men come to get me - clearly less imagination that you - then the rosary will appear. Sometimes a dream of the most ordinary things will have an eerie and disturbing feel enough to wake me with goosebumps and then I recall the psalms, the rosary or quick fire arrow prayers that come to mind.

And so, back to sleep. Have frequent recourse to prayer, scripture and the sacraments and sleep will come, they say. I am lucky. It has always been that way for me. Dreams can be a way for God to speak; they can be a source of temptation but, most often they are an exhausted mind relaxing and letting go before a new day begins.

I am looking forward to seeing you back here. We have some day trips to organise!