First Day of School
"Nature's Timing is Perfect, I think oftentimes;
Rewarding our efforts just before we lose our minds."
.
I have slept restlessly the last couple of weeks.
It's not that I haven't slept. In fact, I have slept deeply. But only for short periods in stressful and sometimes ridiculous dreams.
If I can wake quickly enough once the sun rises, I can sometimes will myself to remain in that space between dream and reality and remember what woke me so suddenly in the first place.
In one dream, after running through the airport with my family, late for an international flight, I realize I don't have my passport (everyone else has theirs) and wake with the feeling of frantically looking in every possible place at once. In another, I am in high school (for the second time) and desperately need to get into my locker, and I can't remember or locate the combination. One time I had a test in a literature or history class during my second trip through college, and I hadn't attended the class the entire semester, much less done the work.
On a few occasions I've talked in my sleep, waking my husband who is, thankfully, almost always amused.
There have also been physical manifestations of whatever psychological weight there is to my dreams. I've been grinding my teeth in my sleep (again), so I've been sleeping with the polymer insert my dentist recommended (which I sometimes think makes me grind my teeth more, albeit with less damage). And a tight pain at the back of my neck is making me roll my head around loosely until I hear and feel a series of familiar cracks and the temporary relief they bring.
"The only remaining child in my household is about to start school. I'm gonna have a full 6 hours of undivided solitude every day. In my own house. What the hell could I be stressed about?" I asked my husband, not expecting an answer (and not getting one).
After a couple of seemingly dreamless nights, last night - the night before my son started middle school - my sleep was haunted again by a series of stressful episodes. I lingered in the last one as I woke. I was sitting on the toilet, waiting impatiently for the healthiest poop of my life to drop into the water below. It was halfway there and had been that way for 30 minutes or more. Outside the bathroom, my family was waiting for me to go somewhere, and I was yelling apologies through the closed door as I tried to relax and will myself to release the ungodly plug. It was horrible.
"You were talking in your sleep last night," my husband chuckled as he walked into the kitchen this morning.
"Was I?" I said sheepishly. "I'm sorry."
"Yeah," he laughed again. "'First you said you had to wipe the pee off the seat and then you said you were pooping. You were pretty emphatic about it."
I told him about my ridiculous dream and, as he walked back up the stairs, called, "Well there's no question what this one is about."
The creaking of his feet on the stairs stopped. "What?" he asked. In my mind his face was incredulous.
"Shit or get off the pot?" I said. "I'm writing all day today."
And, now that I've dropped the only child in my house at his first day of school since Covid struck, this is exactly what I'm doing.
Author Bio:
A Durham, NC, resident for 20 years, Melissa Rooney is a scientific editor, freelance writer, and author of several science-based children’s picture books. Her stories Eddie the Electron and The Fate of the Frog form the basis of two “hands-on” workshops she conducts for elementary- and middle-school students. When she isn’t writing, editing, reading, teaching, or experiencing theater, Rooney volunteers as an Associate Supervisor for Durham’s Soil and Water Conservation District.