Dreamscape

I don’t usually remember my dreams. Generally, I wake up with a feeling of, “That was a weird dream,” but I couldn’t tell you why it was weird or who was in it or anything that actually happened. I’ve even had nights where a dream was so vivid and detailed that I knew with complete certainty that I would be able to recall the dream later in the day. “Let me tell you about the dream I had last night,” I’d start saying, and then as I would try to describe the dream, “It was so cool! There was…. ummm….” Nope. I'd be completely left hanging with the mere sensation of bewilderment knowing how only a couple of hours earlier I could recall the dream in crystal-clear detail. But last night, or rather, this morning (as I had planned on sleeping in) I had a dream about my kids.

Parts of the dream are still fuzzy, but I remember picturing my boys, as teenagers, standing in front of me. I think I was in bed, like it was Mother’s Day, or maybe I was sitting in a chair. And they came close to me and said something like, “Mom, we’re here to present this award to you for….” There were no words after that, but simultaneously, (because that can happen in dreams), simultaneously I was talking to someone about what a treasure my kids are and how they’ve grown up so fast – how time went by in a literal blink. “People always told me that time will pass too quickly, but somehow it still caught me by surprise,” I remarked.

Then I told whoever I was with how important it is to hold on to every memory and enjoy every insignificant moment you can with your kids because there is just no way to stop the growing up process. There’s no way to slow it down to make their youth last a little longer. Once they grow up and have lives of their own, it is so much harder to make moments with them to treasure because they will have college and jobs and families of their own to take care of. Everything changes. Then the simultaneous scene flashed back to my boys. Jake leaned in to give me a hug and I just held him so long and started sobbing. And that’s how I woke up. All day, since waking from that dream, I’ve had this nostalgia hanging around me like a knot stuck in my throat.

I feel like my kids and I had many terrific and memorable moments together. Homeschooling allowed us to spend a lot of time together, time that I genuinely enjoyed. I don’t really have regrets about the time I spent with them – I mean, I know I’m not perfect and of course there are some things I wish I could have done differently – but we did spend a lot of valuable time together. I have many happy memories. I’m incredibly proud of my kids, too. They’re good, responsible, and respectable young adults making plans and building lives for themselves.

All I can do now is hold on to the memories we’ve had and treasure the moments to come. Even as adults, time with them is precious.