Dreams

Do you watch Cougar Town?  The comedy used to be on ABC but now it’s on TBS on Tuesday nights at 10/9c (in case you’re wondering what happened to it).  I like the humor on the show.  That, and they drink a lot of wine (like normal people) (okay, like me).  Courteney Cox’s character, Jules, actually has a name for her wine glass.  Big Karl, I think.  Ha!

Editor’s note:  There is such a thing as too much Botox and lip augmentation.  It really must suck to be over 40 in Hollywood.

In the first episode of the new season, Jules has a dream where Grayson (Josh Hopkins) does something bad.  We never find out what he did (in the dream), but Jules believes it to be real and insists that he apologize.  Funny, right?  Because dreams aren’t real.

I had a terrifying dream the other night that felt so real that I woke myself up.  I dreamed I was on an airplane dangling in the sky…dangling as in about to fall…fall as in about to crash.  It was nighttime and all I could see were stars outside the windows.  I had no idea if we were over land or water.  There were other people on the plane but I didn’t know them.  I was me.  In other words, I was exactly who I am in real life – a Crazy Mama who spends too much money on owl tchotchkes.  As the plane was about to drop (and just before I forced myself awake), all I thought about was myself and that I didn’t want to die.

My family is my life, my livelihood.  Aside from a few precious hours during the day when I run or write (or watch Cougar Town), almost everything I do is for my family, Dylan and Riley especially.  So, why didn’t I think about my loved ones in the harrowing moments before my (dream) death?  Why didn’t I have gorgeous flashbacks of my childhood, my wedding day, and the births of my boys?  Just like Jules, I woke up wanting to blame someone for what happened.  The difference is that she smacked Grayson and I wanted to smack myself.

I struggle every day with the intensity of love I feel for my boys and the resentment I sometimes feel about losing myself in them – about putting their wants, their needs, and their everything above mine.  It’s not their fault.  I made a series of choices that led me to the off-kilter, unbalanced world of Stay-at-Home Mama-hood.  I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, but I sometimes wonder what I might’ve accomplished had I chosen a different path on the spectrum.

Guilty Mama alert!

I told Mike how selfish I felt about not thinking about the people I love before the (dream) crash, and he reminded me that it wasn’t real.  He also suggested that maybe the dream wasn’t about dying at all.  Maybe it was about writing the book and feeling – for the first time in a long time – that I was, in fact, doing something just for me.  He also thought it was silly that I was tormenting myself about it.  Silly, indeed, but I’m far too good at it to pass up such a rich opportunity.  He’s right.  The Book is all mine.  It’s my dream and my burden, and it’s forced me to give myself completely to the writing process, which is new, unfamiliar, not surprisingly guilt producing, and every now and then as terrifying as, for instance, being on a plane dangling in the nighttime sky.

Thankfully, it was just a dream.