Yesterday

“I had nightmares last night, but I can’t tell you what they were about because you’d freak your head out.” — Olivia

5:40 a.m.

Hah! It’s not Olivia’s nightmares that would freak me out. I just spent what seemed like hours in the midst of a bad dream that sends shivers down my spine. It was about Olivia, and she refused to go to sleep for hours and hours, kept getting up, and didn’t care about what I said or did, or what consequences or punishments I would use.

Currently, the parents of this house maintain a thin veneer of control over the children. Putting aside the nice desire to fully embody love and logic and the application of natural consequences, when metaphorical push comes to real-world shove, we rely on other strategies to exert control. My nightmare was of a child who fully and completely realized that she could not be controlled. It’s good to have parental ‘authority,’ but worse than Freddy Krueger scary to be confronted with the fragility of it in the middle of the night.