Plethora of Pop’s Rate-A-Record

I Learned to Dream in 1958

Or at least I remember some nightmares

Photo by Olesya Yemets on Unsplash

In 1958, I was finally sleeping in my own bed. I don’t remember what that bed looked like — its dimensions or comfort-level — but it was in my parents’ bedroom, within easy distance of being soothed. And though I don’t remember why, I have the distinct memory of crying in my sleep and likely crying out, too.

When we talk about the anxious mind and how to calm it, we often try to trace the anxiety and fear back to their root source. But how to do that when, at two years old, we remember the crying but not what caused it? How to battle a demon that lies nameless and featureless in memory, but that continued causing night terrors for years?

So sure, I outgrew the bad dreams and cries in the night eventually, causing my parents to believe I had simply outgrown the shaky shadows that haunted me. I understand their desire to believe I was all right, even through the end game of my bedwetting and homesickness. One morning we all realized that these events were over.

Yet, dreams of encroaching shadows, a world I can neither fully grasp nor understand, still cause me to yell out on random nights. And if I say that out of every 365 nights, this happens only four or five times, don’t be…