Passages

As many people do, I have anxiety dreams every once in a while. Usually, they focus on either school or work. In the work ones, which usually occur during my first few weeks at a new job, I'm either standing in a conference room saying absolutely ridiculous things, or performing one repetitive task (past work dreams have consisted of shelving in an endless warehouse of books, swiping items across a scanner, typing countless address labels, or copying and pasting data into an Excel spreadsheet). In the school ones, I'm back in high school, and my math homework, which always seems to consist of several hundred incomprehensible algebra problems, isn't done. Or it's the first day of a new semester, and I have no schedule, no textbooks, and no backpack...and I can't remember my locker combination. Or I'm just running late, very late, and getting to school at midnight. And, many moons ago, during a particularly stressful week at Former Employer, I got a a double whammy, dreaming that I was back at my high school...and so were my coworkers.

A new era of anxiety dreams has dawned, though. Last night, I kept waking up in a cold sweat, sitting bolt upright, and checking the alarm clock; this happened at least three times that I can remember. What was I dreaming about?

Well, you know you're a grownup when you stop dreaming about being late for school, and start dreaming about making your kid late for school. Today was Boy Wonder's first official day of school, and since it's been thunderstorming a whole damn lot here and we had a power outage that knocked out the alarm clocks* night before last, I was somewhat concerned (more than somewhat, judging by what my subconscious was doing) about oversleeping and making Boy Wonder get his very first tardy. I don't know what he dreamed about; perhaps nothing, as he fell into an utterly exhausted sleep after melting down completely before bedtime. To hell with the subconscious; when you're four, everything comes whooshing right out your conscious. (After his third bout of howling hysteria, we sat and talked about how school will be fun and exciting, but it's TOTALLY OKAY to be a little scared about going new places and making new friends.)

As it was, though, we got up early and arrived at school right on time, and I got to stand on the playground (in a light drizzle, because it's still raining a whole damn lot here) watching the classes line up and enter the building. I even got to hold Boy Wonder's hand as he followed his new classmates down the hall, and wave at him as he placed his backpack on the table and joined his class for morning circle time.

*Hey, the kids wake up at 5:51. Who needs an alarm clock anyway?