I watched an interview with the now uber successful author of the Twilight series and I was surprised to learn that she was a mother of three, in her thirties and had never written anything up until her first best selling, blockbuster novel. I wondered if maybe lightning could strike twice. Even more interesting was that she claimed the idea/concept for the story resulted from a dream she had where visions of a vampire loving a non-vampire were so vivid she felt obliged to write down her thoughts. I guess the key to this part of the story is that she had a dream. In other words, she was well rested. I am a mother of three, in my thirties, have never written anything other than a grocery list but where this falls apart in my case is the sleeping. If only I could get a single night of sleep, solid, uninterrupted sleep, perhaps I too could actually dream.
My two oldest daughters came to me with a problem recently involving their dreams. My three year old was waking late at night having dreamt that a deer was hitting her in the stomach with his hoof. My husband had recently hit a deer on the highway so I had no doubt that her vision was a direct response to his near death experience. Hanna, age six, then claimed to have had a bad dream about being attacked by a bear. I think this was a direct response to the attention we were giving Ellie about the deer, but off I went to devise a plan.
I explained to the girls the notion of the dream catcher. They were both so intrigued by the idea that something existed that could actually catch a bad dream and keep their minds open to have only pleasant ones. I set off to the basement to fashion a couple of dream catchers together. To the Christmas ornament box! The first dream catcher for Hanna was a silver firefly with beaded fake pearls on the wings and of course a string attached to hang from the tree..I mean…to hang from the window and catch her bad dreams. The second was a small mouse lighting a candle that popped into a Christmas light bulb when hanging from the tree but for now it would do nicely. I think I made up a story about how the light would guide the bad dreams in the other direction while lighting the way for good thoughts. I know, it was weak but I had their undivided attention.
After the first night, Hanna thought her dream catcher worked but it might have let one or two bad dreams eek through and she thought she needed a second catcher to pick up the drifters that foiled the first firefly. Ellie thought that her dream catcher worked a little too well in that it caught both the good dreams and the bad, leaving her with nothing to remember of her night’s sleep. Ah sleep. Back to the box I went. Hanna’s second dream catcher was once again silver but this time, it was a glittery, miniature disco ball whose reflective qualities would confuse the bad dreams thus rendering them useless. Ellie’s dream “giver” was an old earring I found whose pair had gone missing several years earlier. The dream giver was of course enlisted to produce positive thoughts which Ellie’s creative juices could then flow into and compile a fabulous story that would be so vivid she would remember it when she woke up in the morning.
Later that same day, I found an earring in one of my old boxes that was a replica of an actual dream catcher. I assumed one of my aunts had given it to me as a pre-teen and mailed it from wherever they were living at the time with the assumption that this was what all the kids were wearing. And perhaps we were. I just have no recollection of it. I couldn’t go back to the girls and tell them to disregard everything I had told them and start using the real dream catcher, which, by the way, I could only ever find one, so, when Hanna complained that she too should have a dream giver if Ellie had one, out came the earring. Hanna’s dresser now housed; one silver firefly Christmas tree ornament, one mini-disco ball (also ornament) and one actual dream catcher earring. On Ellie’s bedpost hung; one mouse lighting a Christmas light bulb, one rogue earring and too many mistruths for Mommy to count.
While I can’t say for certain what my book will ever be about, I do know who I would dedicate it to so perhaps I should start there.
To my brother-in-law Mark who encouraged me to write a blog.
To my brother Ted who told me not to.
To my mother who said my emails were hilarious and that I should write a book.
To my mother-in-law who said she got a “real hoot” out of my notes to her about the kids.
To my father-in-law who asks me every time we speak, “How’s the book Lizzy?”
To my father who told me “What you want to do, is write a mystery.”
To Tina Fey who offered me a job writing on her show after reading my book.
To Oprah who said if only her show were going to be around a little longer, I would be her last guest.
To my husband who after reading the first page said, “I won’t quit my job just yet”
To my children, the real dream givers.
