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A gift I didn’t know I needed:

I had a dream that Carol and I and the baby (Lightning Bug) were walking to our car in a grocery store parking lot at night.  We saw a figure across the lot under a streetlight.  I picked up the baby and we all walked over to the figure.  

It was my mom.  

She was herself from over twenty years ago, calmly, cheerfully waiting. The baby climbed out of my arms and my mom bent over and started talking to her, and I introduced them both, and I did not know until that moment how much I wish my mother could have met this baby during her life. How much she would have cherished and rejoiced in her joining our family. What a gift to her and Lightning Bug that would have been.

But in this dream, at least for a few minutes, they got that gift.  

I don’t know if it was a message from beyond or my subconscious, but I woke up deeply moved and grateful.

 Looking back as we move forward:

One of my acute pleasures as a storyteller is watching Lightning Bug figure out narrative: the joy of understanding how one event follows another, the drama, suspense, surprises, and humor that unfolds, especially as we read books.

But she is teaching me a new way to read as well.

Once she knows a story, she will have favorite moments/images that she looks forward to, and once we’ve passed those, she’ll insist on going back to look at them again every few pages, even as the story continues to its end. The effect is of going even deeper into the characters’ minds through constant flashbacks – as life progresses we still replay the moments before in quick bursts, be it with laughter or PTSD. We are always looking back as we move forward.

Even the simplest children’s books are now experiments in memory and time.