Spin Cycle – Page 85 – Lemon Drop Pie

I have dreams. Haunted, vivid dreams; dreams that are hard to shake. Scary movies give me bad dreams. I saw the Blair Witch Project on premier night, before all the parodies, and I couldn’t sleep all night long. My nightmares kept waking me up.

Not long after Ed and I were married, I was sound asleep when Ed had insomnia. He went downstairs to sleep on the couch. I woke up briefly, saw the empty side of the bed, and then I had such a vivid dream of him cheating on me that I woke up in tears and ran downstairs to find him.

The dreams I remember are usually not the happy kind.

But daydreams are different.

When I was younger, I was always daydreaming. I would have the staring-out-the-window blank-look-on-my-face kind of daydreams. I would daydream about the books I was reading. Through the wardrobe I would go, into the land of Narnia with Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy. In my daydreams, Scarlett O’Hara would realize that Rhett was way better than Ashley. Or I would daydream about TV shows. Of course I would be A.J.’s girlfriend, the blond-haired blue-eyed cutie pie half of Simon & Simon!

Back then, my daydreams were wonderful. They were necessary; they helped me survive some difficult preteen and teenaged years. I was able to lose myself in those daydreams.

Nowadays, my daydreams are much more mundane.

How can I organize my pantry?

Would I be able to make that cute ear bud detangler thing I saw on Pinterest?

What blog post will I write next?

They have to have a practical spin; there’s not much fantasy going on in my mind these days. While I used to lose myself in a daydream plot for days on end, now I’m often brought back to reality rather quickly. There’s always someone to feed, errands to run, teaching to do. I haven’t lost myself in a daydream in a really long time.

Sometimes I wonder if those daydreams are lost to me. If I’m just too old for daydreams anymore. But then I think about my life. I have such happiness that there’s not much need for daydreams any more.

I think about myself with white hair, sitting on the porch at a nursing home. My face is full of wrinkles like a crumpled piece of paper. I tilt my head toward the sun. My eyes are closed as I lose myself in a daydream; a dream of those who have gone before me; of those that I loved and those who loved me. Of the life I have lived.

Those will be daydreams worth having.

I see him rolling down the green, grassy hill, the sunlight glowing in his blond curls. As soon as he stops moving, UP he pops, a little powerhouse trundling back up the hill. He plops down and rolls down the hill again. And again. And again. Among all the school aged kids, he looks so young and small. Like the baby he is.

Just that morning, I had been trying to teach him THE RULES. He, along with the other 15 children in my class, is just three years old. Sitting on the rug to listen to fingerplays and stories are not their stong suits. Sharing with other children–definitely a skill that needs to be practiced. Standing in line to go wash hands for snack time? Not intuitive to three year olds.

This is my first year teaching threes, and I have been pulling out every trick in my book. I have been using puppets to distract crying, SCREAMING kids from wanting their mommies. I have been patiently showing threes how to share. I have been telling them NOT to grab toys out of the other children’s hands. I have been picking up kids to put them back in their spot on the rug again and again, Super Nanny style. I have been holding hands and letting children sit on my lap.

All these rules, like PLAY NICE and SHARE and LISTEN and LINE UP must be taught. These three year olds are just at the beginning of their school life, where it will be important for them to follow the rules. Yet among all these rules we do play for much of the morning, sing, dance and give the kids new, fun experiences.

As I lay in bed last night, thinking about the little boy rolling down the hill, I thought that is right where he SHOULD be–rolling down a grassy hill in the sunshine, again and again.

This week at Sprite’s Keeper, the topic of Spin Cycle is “rules”. For more spins about rules, click on over!

post signature