Keep Calm, It’s Only a Dream

I awoke with a start. I heard thumps and squeals. It was 11:30 p.m.  In the other hotel bed, my son was still sleeping. Like my husband, the boy can sleep through just about anything. I, on the other hand, sleep like a mouse cowering in the corner of a snake pit.

There were more squeals. Then came thumping down the hotel hallway. A door slammed. A door opened. Then a door slammed again. Then, I heard more squealing.

It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the sound waves were being emitted from the mouths of several tween girls. Where were their parents? Why wasn’t anyone telling them to shut up?

Various scenarios ran through my mind. Maybe they lived in the hotel? Maybe this went on every single night? Maybe they were there just to annoy me?

Every muscle in my body stiffened with anger.

“That’s it,” I told myself. “This is ridiculous. I’m getting my assertive on.”

In the darkness, I searched for clothing. I felt around for tags and seams. Was my shirt inside out?

There came more squeals.

Now I didn’t care if it was inside out or right side in. I yanked the shirt over my head.

I grabbed my key card and, in bare feet, stepped into the hallway. I stood and listened.

The squeals were coming from a room down the hall.

I walked toward the sounds.

I took a few steps and stopped. I waited. Then came more squealing. I walked a few steps more.

I came to a door. I waited. I didn’t want to knock until I was sure it was the right one.

It didn’t take long. There were more squeals. Yes, I had the right room.

And I also had a sufficient amount of anger to douse the squeals of every tween girl into the entire world.

I raised my fist.

My knuckles were inches from the door.

I was just about to knock. Something, however, made me hesitate.

A Buddhist teaching wafted through my mind: “I am one while they are many.”

They – six, seven, maybe eight of them – were on the other side of the door. They were happy, joyful, and filled with fun. On my side of the door was decrepit old me – a middle aged mother who could use some more fun in her life, for sure.

For all I knew, the rest of my hotel floor was either vacant or booked with guests who slept as deeply as my son. It dawned on me that I might be the only person in the entire hotel who was suffering.

If I knocked, the tweens on the other side of the door would be suffering, too – especially if I unleashed the string of curse words that were stewing within the hot bundle of air just behind my clenched front teeth.

Then I had a vision. I saw my future self stomping back to her room, slamming her door, and then tossing and turning all night long as she grumbled about how she shouldn’t have had to tell those crazy girls to shut up in the first place. I could also see the future for the girls. They’d be sullen and sulky, and they would whisper to each other, “Why did we end up on the floor with the mean barefoot lady in the inside out shirt?”

Neither was a future I wanted.

So I lowered my arm to my side. I took a deep breath. I turned, and I walked back to my room. I slid the keycard into the door. Rather than a green light and a click, I was greeted to a red light and silence. I tried the card again. Still, I got a red light.

“Is this the right door?”

I took a few steps back.

A sense of confusion came over me. It was the kind of confusion that one feels when one is dreaming. You know the dream of the final exam for a class you haven’t attended? The one where you can’t find the building because you’ve never before gone to it? I felt that kind of confusion except that, instead of a classroom, I was looking for my hotel room, inside of which my son was sleeping.

If I were dreaming, I’d eventually open the door to find an elephant and a lion and 10 clowns inside – because that’s how dreams go, don’t they? Then, I would spend the rest of the dreamy night opening one door after another only to find wild and crazy sights that were anything but my beloved son asleep in his bed.

So the question was: Was I dreaming?

And, dream or not, did I want to knock on this door?

I decided to go for it. After all, if it were a dream, then no matter what happened next, I’d eventually wake back up. And if it wasn’t a dream? I was woman enough to deal with it.

I knocked loudly.

I yelled my son’s name.

I knocked some more.

I yelled his name a few more times.

It occurred to me that I was now being more disruptive than the tween girls.

It also occurred to me that no one was going to come to the door.

I took the elevator to the lobby. When I told the lady at the front desk that some tweens were having a wild party on my floor and that I’d gotten locked out of my room because of them, she said, “That happens. I’m sorry.”

It seemed to me that front desk people only responded with phrases like that in one’s dreams.

She handed me a new key and she wished me sweet dreams.

Up the elevator I went. Down the hall I went.

In front of the door that may or may not have been mine I stood.

I slid the key into the slot.

Green light. Click.

Now I was inside, in the dark entryway, and something felt very off. I can’t explain it. It just didn’t feel like I was in the right place.

I stood in the dark for a long moment and I wondered, “What if this isn’t my room?”

I figured I had two options. I could either turn on the light and possibly wake a very deep sleeping stranger who would think I was there to mug him and then proceed to murder me in self defense.

That didn’t seem like a strategy with a high probability of success.

So I decided to quietly tip toe over to the bed where either my son or a stranger was sleeping. I could hear light breathing. I waited. I knew it would be a while before my eyes adjusted. If, when my eyes adjusted, I saw my son? My plan was to go to sleep with a relieved smile on my face. If my eyes adjusted and I saw a stranger, the plan was simple: run!

I could spend a lot of time here building up the suspense and keeping you on the edge of your seat.

Or I could just tell you what actually happened next.

I need to finish writing this post so I can get other stuff done, so I’m just going to lay it on you.

When my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the faint outline of a 10-year-old boy.

My 10-year-old boy.

Let me tell you: I’ve never been so happy to see that 10-year-old boy.

I crawled back into bed.

I could hear faint squeals.

It was then that I understood I had a choice. I could listen for the squealing and continue to feel angry and confused, or I could stop listening for the squeals and possibly fall asleep.

“If you realize you are dreaming,” a Buddhist teacher had said earlier that day, “Why would you choose to have a nightmare?”

“Why?” I asked myself. “Why am I choosing to have a nightmare?”

I choose to have a good dream instead. I drifted off with a smile on my face, happy that those girls were having such a good time.

The following morning, at breakfast, seven tween girls appeared. They were wearing matching hot pink T-shirts. On the front, there was big block lettering:  “Keep Calm, It’s Maggie’s Birthday.”

I didn’t know which one was Maggie, but silently, I wished her a happy birthday.

Learn more about Alisa's book, the story of how she went from wishing her husband dead to falling back in love.

Want to discuss Project: Happily Ever After at book club or your church group? Click here for an entertaining guide.
Go to ProjectHappilyEverAfter.com for more marriage advice or to converse with other recovering divorce daydreamers.

No related posts.