It’s been a while since I’ve had a full, uninterrupted night’s sleep. A year ago our youngest son was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes and since then, I pad to his room at 2:00 AM every morning to make sure he’s not running ‘low’ or ‘high.’ In whatever broken sleep I do enjoy, though, I dream. It’s always been a fascinating mystery to me, how the quickly the subconscious can work so fast to wrap a dream around a sound.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a full, uninterrupted night’s sleep. A year ago our youngest son was diagnosed with Juvenile Diabetes and since then, I pad to his room at 2:00 AM every morning to make sure he’s not running ‘low’ or ‘high.’ In whatever broken sleep I do enjoy, though, I dream. It’s always been a fascinating mystery to me, how the quickly the subconscious can work so fast to wrap a dream around a sound.
One night, sometime between the 2:00 AM glucose check and the break of dawn I was happily wading in the cool of a shallow creek, calmed by the sound of babbling water, when I was shaken awake by a small voice whispering "Mom! Mama!”
"Wha? What Chris?" Through sleep dulled eyes I spied Chris standing at my side of the bed.
"My pants are wet."
"Oh, do you have to use the potty?" I ask, dragging my body out from under warm, comfortable sheets.
"Not anymore."
"I'll get you some clean underpants. Go ahead and take those off. Did you wet your bed?"
It takes only two steps to discover that the sound of water in my dreams was not a babbling brook, but rather what felt like a gallon of cold liquid poured onto the bedroom carpet.
"Oh! Did all of this come out of you?" We affectionately refer to Chris as ‘the camel’ due to his extraordinary ability to hold his bladder. On this night, however, Chris’s Kegel went kaput – all over my carpet.
While I went about the business of toweling up the mess and foraging for clean shorts, Chris had climbed up into bed next to a sleeping Chuck.
"Hi Dad!" Chris whispers.
"Hmmm? Humph, mmm, mmm, Hi Chris."
"I'm in the big bed, Dad."
"That's nice, Chris. Welcome aboard."
"There's some problem, though, Dad."
"What's that, Chris?"
"I'm naked."
“No problem, Chris, go to sleep.”
By the time I got back to the room with a clean pair of underwear, Chris was asleep, conjuring his own adventures. I slid the dry pants onto his bottom and climbed back under the sheets but, for several hours, was unable to find my way back to that cool, peaceful space of my own dreams.