everything else / MOTHERHOOD

dreams

first frost

Last night I had a dream. Actually, it was early this morning–in that time after Elizabeth woke up, coughing and congested and got into bed with me–the two of us falling sound asleep again. I dreamt that I had written a book. Except that it was still in the beginning stages, unpublished. I gave the pages to my mother, sister and brother-in-law to edit and correct. But I couldn't be there with them while they edited, because I had to be with my brother–we were out on the lake, on his speedboat, that was somehow kept afloat by balloons on long strings of red and white baker's twine. All the boats on the lake had these baker's twine balloons. 

When I returned home, they gave me a copy of my edited writing. They took the liberty of rewriting my work, with their changes, and discarding the original. It was written on wide-ruled lined school paper, in cursive, by my 8 year-old niece. There were pages of kid illustrations stapled to the back, and rainbows and squiggly lines down the sides of the pages. Words were missing from sentences, written in the margins with arrows pointing to where they belonged in the page.

My mother sat across the kitchen table from me as I read, eager to hear how much I loved their changes, what a good job they'd done with it, how it was such an improvement. I couldn't understand where my professional-looking original manuscript had gone. I didn't understand why my niece had re-written this serious work, and how they thought it was remotely "okay" to submit it to my editor. "Well, your sister's typewriter was broken, so we had Abby write it for you. She did such a lovely job, didn't she?

I read through their changes, their "improvements". They had changed almost everything. My heart-wrenching details were replaced with babyish sayings, and goofy cliches. I felt stunned. Angry. Betrayed. Heartbroken. Perplexed. Bewildered. Defeated by all the work that was ahead of me, again.

And then, because dreams never resolve themselves, never tie themselves up in a tidy bow before moving on, I woke up. 

And there you have it, a peek inside the mind of a tossing and turning, fitfully-sleeping pregnant woman. I really had no intention of this being the post I wrote this morning, but it was so vivid in my head, I had to put it down somewhere. I had to remind myself not to be mad at my mother and sister when we talked on the phone today. That it was just a dream.

I'll be back tomorrow. I'm bringing back a "simple question". I need some suggestions, and I know you all are just the people to ask…..

first frost

Last night I had a dream. Actually, it was early this morning–in that time after Elizabeth woke up, coughing and congested and got into bed with me–the two of us falling sound asleep again. I dreamt that I had written a book. Except that it was still in the beginning stages, unpublished. I gave the pages to my mother, sister and brother-in-law to edit and correct. But I couldn't be there with them while they edited, because I had to be with my brother–we were out on the lake, on his speedboat, that was somehow kept afloat by balloons on long strings of red and white baker's twine. All the boats on the lake had these baker's twine balloons. 

When I returned home, they gave me a copy of my edited writing. They took the liberty of rewriting my work, with their changes, and discarding the original. It was written on wide-ruled lined school paper, in cursive, by my 8 year-old niece. There were pages of kid illustrations stapled to the back, and rainbows and squiggly lines down the sides of the pages. Words were missing from sentences, written in the margins with arrows pointing to where they belonged in the page.

My mother sat across the kitchen table from me as I read, eager to hear how much I loved their changes, what a good job they'd done with it, how it was such an improvement. I couldn't understand where my professional-looking original manuscript had gone. I didn't understand why my niece had re-written this serious work, and how they thought it was remotely "okay" to submit it to my editor. "Well, your sister's typewriter was broken, so we had Abby write it for you. She did such a lovely job, didn't she?

I read through their changes, their "improvements". They had changed almost everything. My heart-wrenching details were replaced with babyish sayings, and goofy cliches. I felt stunned. Angry. Betrayed. Heartbroken. Perplexed. Bewildered. Defeated by all the work that was ahead of me, again.

And then, because dreams never resolve themselves, never tie themselves up in a tidy bow before moving on, I woke up. 

And there you have it, a peek inside the mind of a tossing and turning, fitfully-sleeping pregnant woman. I really had no intention of this being the post I wrote this morning, but it was so vivid in my head, I had to put it down somewhere. I had to remind myself not to be mad at my mother and sister when we talked on the phone today. That it was just a dream.

I'll be back tomorrow. I'm bringing back a "simple question". I need some suggestions, and I know you all are just the people to ask…..

17 comments on “dreams”

  1. Wow. Aren’t pregnancy dreams the weirdest? Mine this morning was very odd, but unless I write it down right away then it’s gone. All I remember is having to pull weeds that looked and felt like underwater plants while we were at the desert museum. Oh, and all the sweaters I’ve gotten rid of over the years showed back up in my closet. I was very excited when I woke up until I realized it was a dream. Pink sweater, you really are gone forever.

  2. Maybe this means you need to write for children. And when you have book signings and book release parties you will be giving away balloons tied with red and white bakers twine. Isn’t that a lovely thought?

  3. I had a really odd pregnancy dream this morning, too. I was in a swim class (as a kid) where the instructor was teaching us to dive. For some reason I couldn’t ever quite make it back up to the surface and was spluttering constantly until we started diving for objects at the bottom of the pool. I think that must be the 2nd or 3rd swim/diving related dream I’ve had since I got pregnant. I’ve also had plenty of family/friend dreams like yours, too. Who knows why we dream things like that?

  4. nothing like pregnancy to make mess of an otherwise perfectly wonderful night’s sleep. not to worry though. soon you’ll trade those dreams in for two a.m. feedings. enjoy them. 🙂

  5. While pregnant with Katie I had a dream that my sister and I were at the mall carrying our babies around in suitcases. Those hormones do wacky things.

    Also, i do the same thing. I have to remember not to be mad at people in real life when they do something in a dream.

  6. Pregnancy dreams are so vivid. While pregnant with my third baby I felt like when I closed my eyes to go to sleep, it was like turning on the television for an all night viewing marathon.

  7. Oh I’m a big believer in paying attention to our dreams. Pregnant dreams even more so. If you don’t understand what this dream is trying to tell you on a conscious level (and while I could make a guess, it’s not my place to be psycho analysing you), just the fact that you wrote it down and remembered it will give your subconscious a chance to work it out. Sometimes we dream conflict with loved ones (or horrible things like loved ones getting hurt) so we don’t have to do it in the real world.

  8. I wanted to say that I love, love, love this photo! It’s amazing.

    Sort of related, how is it that your photos look so clear? I have a typepad blog (for family that is password protected) and my photos look not so great, even though they do before I upload them. Any ideas???

    Also, I’ve been having crazy, crazy dreams in the postpartum months…probably because we are waking up at all hours nursing…

  9. Hi Allison,I used to feel the same way about my pictures–clear on my computer and then not as nice once i uploaded them to my blog. I started uploading pictures to flickr first, then copying the html code for each picture into my posts and that made a huge difference.hope that helps!!

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