The Median Sib

I got an email from my older sister awhile ago.  Here’s what she wrote:

I rarely dream (or if I do, I don’t remember the dreams the next day). The ones I do remember afterwards are usually just jumbled stuff.

Last night, I had a short, very realistic, incredible dream about daddy. I don’t believe that I have ever dreamed about daddy before.  I want to put the details down on paper so that I won’t forget them!

I have no idea where I was, but I was sitting on a sofa; I looked up and daddy was walking around the back of the sofa to come around to where I was.  It was just incredibly real — he had on a white round neck undershirt with short white sleeves and plain pants, hair sort of messed up like he had just come inside — and smiling such a warm, understanding smile.  He held out his arms and sat beside me; I put my head on his shoulder and sobbed my heart out.  Then, he reluctantly said he had to go (but it was like he had done what he had come to do, but now had to leave). He patted my forehead with his wonderful hands that we all remember soothing our hurts, stood up and walked away.

Our father died almost twenty years ago - in December of 1986.  I remember dreaming of him not long after his death.  The dream was vivid and real.  I still remember it clearly.  My mother, whose father died when she was a child of 9, told me that when she was a child she would pray that she would dream of her father because she knew that was the only way she could see him again.

Reading about my sister’s dream brought tears to my eyes. It made me think about my own dream of our father.  Dreams are puzzling things. 

Three days a week I work with a small group of fourth graders in their writing workshop.  This past week I was conferencing with one child who read his current writing project aloud to me.  The story was about his family reunion.  I was on automated listening as he read his story about grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, food and games.  Then . . .

“I was taking a bath and my mama told me to stay in the bathroom because my granny had died in the other room.  She told me, ‘She wouldn’t want you to see her like that.’”

What?  ”Oh, I’m so sorry!” I replied. ”Your granny died and you had to wait in the bathroom.  What happened?”

He looked up from his reading and said, “There was a man who was going to kill Pappy unless someone sacrificed themself.”

My automated listening mode screeched completely to a halt. Granny died? Someone had to be sacrificed?   ”A man was going to kill your Pappy unless someone sacrificed themself?  What do you mean?”

He looked at me and repeated slowly as if to a not-so-bright child: “Somebody in the family had to jump off the tallest building or the man would kill pappy.  So my cousin did it.”

“Your cousin sacrificed himself?”

“Yes. He jumped off the tallest building.”

“What happened? Did it kill him?”

“No, he used a bungee so we could fool the man into thinking he had sacrificed himself.”

What on earth?  Granny died? A man threatened to kill Pappy?  Someone had to be sacrificed?  A bungee fooled the man?  This was certainly more action packed than any family reunion I’ve ever attended.  This was a personal narrative run amuck!  Was this story the unlikely truth or the product of an active imagination coupled with too much crime television? 

I was certain of the answer, but the story was too big to ignore, and it was also a classic CYA case.  After the children returned to their classrooms, I walked down the hall to the guidance counselor’s office.  She looked up from her desk.  “Sit back and relax,” I said.  “Have I got a story to tell you!”   

The guidance counselor talked with the student later that day.  The story was the result of a vivid imagination and too much tv.  In other words - it was NOT true.  The part about the granny dying might be true.  However, no sacrifices - fake or real - were made to keep the man from killing pappy.  The child has a future in writing crime drama, though.