Sunday, October 3, 2004

Evan

I dreamed about having a son last night. I spent most of the dream gazing fondly down at his face, kissing his skin, rocking him.

He was a tiny thing, barely the size of my hand, with dark, straight hair and pinched eyes. I don't know what color his eyes were.

I had just given birth to him. It was a total surprise. Sean and I weren't ready; we had nothing at home with which to take care of a baby. The hospital room we were in felt more like a hotel room. Sean wrapped his arms around me from behind as I held the baby and said, "You do amazing things, woman."

Time seemed to work oddly in the dream, so that I actually saw the baby as a toddler before I spent so much time holding him as a newborn. Sean was playing with him and calling him alternately "Robert" and "Junior". Dream-logic informed me that Sean's middle name was Robert, even though it isn't. I kind of liked the idea that he'd come around to the whole "Junior" philosophy, but for some reason "Robert" felt wrong; I didn't like it. I remembered the name I'd thought of recently (real life), Evan.

So, later, in the hospital room with the baby cradled in my hands, when the nurse asked what the baby's name was, I said to Sean, "You wanted to name him Junior?"

"Yeah," Sean said. "Were you thinking about something else?"

"I like Evan," I responded.

Sean didn't think too long about it, he just smiled and said, "Okay." He started to spell it "Evin" in his PDA (he doesn't have a PDA), so I corrected the spelling.

Things really went my way for far too long in the dream...you'd think I would have noticed ;P

But I didn't notice until we started to get to the point of taking Evan home, and thinking about how we didn't have any supplies. It just kept going along the same way, without us moving at all, or making any progress, until suddenly I realized I was sleeping and it was all a dream, and I wasn't holding a baby.

"Evan," I thought, "Evan Evan Evan," but thinking his name couldn't make him real, the tiny little baby with the pink skin and pinched up eyes and glossy brown hair. So I opened my eyes and got out of bed.

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