Imagination at Home

Imagination at Home

While taking a stroll in the woods near my older kid's school, I came across a guy carrying a youngster who looked very much like my little son or daughter. They were hiking a little way up the route ahead of me, but we were separated by a deep valley. Though my aging eyesight made me doubt the clarity of the route ahead, I pushed myself to make the quick journey to the trailhead so that we could meet up in the parking lot. Though I was certain that I had delivered my child to his preschool class that morning, I couldn't help but wonder what prompted such a startling likeness. 

As I got closer, I could see the two males, both with bleached white hair, hurriedly placing the kid in the front passenger seat. As soon as I realized the kid wasn't my son, my nerves calmed down, but I approached him/her nevertheless. Closing the door behind him, the guy jogged quickly to the driver's side of the silver Volvo station wagon with slightly tinted glass. They drove by me as I stepped out into the road. While the youngster in the front seat seemed to be approximately six years old, I saw my dearly cherished toddler strapped firmly in the driver's side rear seat of the passing automobile, his countenance marked with inquiry as if to ask, "Where am I going?" Panic! The sight was beyond my wildest imagination. 

Yeah, it was him. I began following the vehicle and memorizing as much information as I could. Male, late forties, beach bum hair and attire, 5 feet 11 inches tall, average build. I'll never forget the exact shade of blue, the model year, and the fact that the license plate had merely the name of a nearby dealership. As the automobile drove away from the scene, a crushing sense of helplessness weighted on me, yet I persisted in my pursuit. I didn't want to phone anybody in the apparently deserted area to issue an Amber alert and call the police, since I would then lose track of where I was going if I stopped the pursuit. I yelled for assistance. "I really need some assistance!" I started bawling my eyes out and yelling, "No!"

The morning slowly slipped through my tearful eyes, and the dreadful desperation I felt, sentiments that no parent should ever feel, gradually started to go away. It wasn't until the sun came up that I realized I'd had one of the worst nightmares ever. I was still inconsolable at the loss of my life's greatest treasure, and the tears were still falling. After my husband was jolted awake by my calls for aid, I recounted the whole scenario to him in great detail. After I came to my senses and recognized the intense adrenaline rush I had just had, I went to my toddler's bedroom, roused the sleeping little rascal, and proceeded to hold him, embrace him, and kiss him repeatedly. A creature of habit, he whispered "brekfis" as he struggled to free himself from my stranglehold.

If you've ever experienced a nightmare like that, you know just how preoccupied I was with that awful sensation for a good portion of the day. I felt the terror and anxiety return as I told the story to many others. During the most intense parts of the conversation, my voice would speed up, and I would use my hands and arms to stress points. I would reach out and clutch my girlfriend's arm as if I were attempting to prevent a fatal plunge into a raging river. "It was only a dream," they would say sympathetically.

I just want to know what the hell happened to my crazy imagination before I had kids. The simplicity of sitting nude in the back of the classroom, panicking because you don't know the answers to a meaningless English quiz, seems to have vanished. Or, consider the exhilarating experience of plunging from the needle's tip of a skyscaper, with the wind whipping against your nose as you dive, all the way down to a height of about an inch over the pavement, and then springing out of bed with a mighty heave.AHH! Also, waking up and realizing it was all a dream, after which one may go about one's day without giving the event another consideration. This specific early-morning parenthood dream encounter was scarier than even the one in which a long, scaly snake coiled itself at my feet in a dream.

Whether my dream was meant to teach me to follow worries to their very conclusion, even if they begin to look erroneous, or to symbolize the numerous ages and phases being crammed into the same vessel, vanishing as life does, is beyond the point. However, a mother's psyche can't handle just worrying and being concerned when awake.

Let's think about every potential threat to our kids and how we can protect them as moms. First, there are the actual risks, which might include anything from wandering dogs and hazardous cleaners to the possibility of a tumble as the kid gets older. Then there are the imaginary threats of needing to save our kids from burning buildings, automobiles driving off a bridge, and obvious evil men (such as the two-headed purple people eater). Finally, when our minds should be at their most peaceful, we have to keep worrying thoughts at bay even while we attempt to sleep.

It gives me great comfort to know that scientific research has proven that the vast majority of the things we worry about never really happen. And if they do, they'll probably be things like leaving out a key component of a signature dish, leaving dirty socks in the gym bag, or forgetting to send a friend or family member a birthday card. Perhaps even those would be stressful, but they would be preferable to harm coming to our children. Therefore, we can all relax knowing that the self-inflicted, heart-pounding impact our mother's imaginations may have on us in the meanwhile is simply another form of creatively discovering methods to keep our children safe, even if it operates day and night.