Picking up Bean yesterday, she informed me that I should be carrying a knife and fork.
“Why?” I asked her.
“Because last night I had a dream that you were a cannibal and you killed us and ate us. Then the dream went back in time and you had four kids and you killed them. Then it went forward in time and I had to fight you, only you were Helen Hunt and you hit me with an axe. But I beat you with a butter knife.“
Fuck. The word why always gets me into trouble.
While naturally prone to busily waxing poetic on so many things, and looking optimistically towards my own future (okay, partially optimistic, given the state of our world) even I find it nearly impossible to create any beautiful, trenchant, enlightening viewpoint to share from the fact your daughter has just dreamed you are a cannibal.
Believe me. I’m trying.
“So…you dreamed I killed you and then noshed on your organs. Perhaps, at its foundation, this is you expressing your desire that I grow closer to you?“
Bullshit. Won’t work.
I wouldn’t even believe it, let alone say it with a straight face. Plus, you know, there’s that whole business about trying to process what she has just told me. It’s disgusting. It’s frightening, for her to experience and for me to talk about. It’s (dare I say this without sinking to an all-time low pun level) distasteful. And I’m not going to sugarcoat any of that, least of all with her.
But I can sense that she needs something from me, some sort of reassurance that dreams like this are normal. She does not normally dream like this. I do. All of her life has been filled with dreams she either does not recall or ones that involve bunnies, kitties, Beanie babies and Nintendo games. Not slaughtering mommy while she is swinging an axe in the kitchen, trying to make you her next rump roast.
So, I ask more questions. Proving that some people never learn.
“Um…did I cook you guys?” (Sue me. I’m not always Johnny-on-the-Spot when it comes to minimizing my feelings and trying to keep things light.)
Still trying to find something positive to bring out of this experience. You know, like maybe I turned out to be the cannibal version of Betty Crocker, and prepared the meal gracefully, or made some creative dish, like Christie tetrazzini or something. Maybe even set the table, lit some candles – something that would change me in her eyes from a murderer to Martha Stewart. Anything.
“No, you just hacked at me and ate my arm, raw.”
So much for that approach.
“Condiments?” (I’m really still grasping at straws.)
“Nope. No salt, no pepper.”
We’re silent for a moment. I’m still desperately trying to siphon something positive from the whole thing, for both our sakes. Am also trying not to get too far down the Freudian path, or become too serious about the fact my child subliminally equates me with a one-woman Donner Party. Maybe she’ll make a movie someday called, “My Mother, The Cannibal!” or “Mommy was a Flesh-Eating Monster” or “Honey, I Ate the Kids.”
“But,” she brightens, “you DID use a knife and fork.”
“Oh, that’s good! My table manners didn’t leave me even though I became a bloodthirsty ghoul.“
Whew. See? Her unconscious doesn’t think I’m totally bad or uncivilized. Sure, she may harbor some deep-seated resentment and feelings that I am a mad killing machine, but at the very least she knows better than to ever dream I’d not know the difference between salad and regular forks. It’s salvageable.
Since that is the case, since we’re comfortably discussing her dream, I simply can’t let well enough (well, in this case, not sure that term applies — maybe, bad enough?) alone:
“Are you upset with me, lately? Have I done something that you felt was overstepping boundaries or encroaching on you? Do you think that maybe something is bothering you?“
“No.”
We walk along, a little closer to the lake now, in happy, comfortable silence. Except for the fact that I’m a newly-minted fiend, this is pleasant. I find myself wondering if she’s going through something, if there is some sort of problem between us. We’ve not been sleeping well, either one of us. When I walked into work yesterday morning at 8:30 to pick up some paperwork I’d left behind the night before, everyone looked at me as though they saw a ghost. Patty came over and hugged me, asking if I was okay. I’ve been, for want of a better term, a little rough around the edges lately, between kitty ho’s caterwauling and other things.
“I blame you, because you left the sectional and went upstairs to sleep,” she said.
Uh-oh. Blame. My favorite, since I’m so good at blaming myself already. I wonder if I’m a bad mother? Is she resentful? Does she hate me, deep down inside? Was the dream supposed to be mine, but she got it by default because I went upstairs? My dreams are always awful, but lately they’ve risen to a new level of suck, with family members keeling over dead and evil cults.
Finally, I ask.
“Do you think the dream represents some sort of hidden feelings you have toward me? Something unresolved? Something you need to talk about? Are you scared of me, now, or seeing me differently? “
“No, mom. Don’t be dumb. It was only a dream.“
And in an instant, all is well. We walk along the path farther and she links her arm with mine. There is so much she teaches me on a daily basis about how best to live and to apply the principle of Occam’s Razor, whenever possible. God, I love my daughter.
Not enough to eat her, but you know what I mean.
