Frog People

As a child, I had a recurring dream from the time I was, oh, four until I was about nine years old. In this dream I was on an island with my cousin Chet (don't we all have a cousin "Chet"?) and we were running from the frog people who inhabited the island.

We managed to get to one end of the island where we could see our parents/siblings on a neighboring island waving at us to come over. But neither of us could swim and the frog people were closing in on us.

Then Chet turned into Tarzan and swung us over on a vine...

I had this dream once a week or so.

I figured out a few months into having the dream that if I fell asleep holding my mom's hand, I didn't have the dream that night. Or, if I slept on the side of the bed that was against the wall, the dream stayed away. But if I had to fall asleep without my mom's hand or on the outside of the bed, the dream came.

I know...I need therapy. Don't we all?

But a few nights ago, after moving Alyssa's mattress from the bottom bunk in the room where the girls' clothes hang in the closet onto the floor in a corner of my room, about two feet from my bed, Alyssa and I discovered that if we both reach out, we can hold hands for a bit at night as we wind down.

I do this even though my elbow starts to ache and my shoulder starts feeling wrenched because I remember the comfort of holdling my mom's hand, of knowing the frog people weren't going to invade my dreams for at least that one night.

This could explain why I'm so reluctant to force either of the girls to sleep alone. As a child, I didn't want to sleep alone either.

Yet I went off to college and slept in my own bed without needing to hold my roommate's hand all night long (probably much to Edie's relief.)

And as an adult, I long to have the bed all to myself. I long to have that space child-free.

But it will be. Sooner than I realize and so, while I bitch and moan about having someone sleeping on my arm, I keep letting it happen because it means so much more to them to be there, beside me, holding my hand, than it does to me to shove them out of the bed and even the room. A few more year and I'll be begging them to let me hug them. So I'm going to keep on holding them whenever they let me, for as long as they'll let me.