Monster

Today would have been my mother’s 92^nd birthday. I can’t say that I miss her, but I wish she had lived long enough to have seen me marry and have children. I especially wish she had had the chance to get to know my family. She would have adored them and they, her.

Life’s relativity is funny: I never wanted children and at this point in my life, as I age and ache and wonder if I’ll ever find a job, I can’t imagine my life without them.

Lately I have been dreaming of motherhood and of the kids when they were young. Several weeks ago E. appeared in my dream as an infant. And today, shortly before dawn, I dreamt that he was a little boy, perhaps 7 or 8, swimming in a lagoon and perilously close to a giant alligator. 

“It’s at 10 o’clock,” I’d said, using the image of the hour-hand to point out the beast's location to E., who then promptly dove into the water, as I watched in terror through a picture window from a room above.

The alligator was prehistorically large, like a dinosaur. It was moving  through the lagoon swiftly, headed toward E. and a buddy, who were frolicking near a boulder. I was yelling through the window, begging them  to get out of the water, but E. clamored onto the boulder and when the alligator got close enough, he sidled onto its head, where he sat for a few seconds, giggling with delight. As the alligator rose, E. tumbled into the water, and just as it was about to make a dive for my boy, I woke myself up, screaming.

No doubt, last week's  massacre in Newtown, Connecticut of  20  six–year–olds fueled this nightmare. 

But there is another--more mundane--trigger, which is my dread of my own aging and mortality, which looms especially large as the arthritis in my hip worsens, my hearing dims and I grow increasingly obsolete in a job market that is hungry for social media whizzes 20 years younger than I. These days, I can't even keep step with my  kids, who speak as fast as I did at 16, when my mother, facing her own aging, complained that I swallowed my words.

At 54, I see now that she was frustrated at how precipitously she was slowing down. I look and R. and E. and I delight in watching them gobble up life. I also worry about the increasing limitations of age gobbling me up. 

Perhaps I’m the little kid in the lagoon.