Dreams

Last night Connor wanted me to sing to him. I have a very limited repertoire of lullaby-like songs--well, really just three: Wonderful World, Somewhere Over the Rainbow, and Amazing Grace. Connor wanted something new, so I dug a little deeper. I decided on "He Went to Paris" by Jimmy Buffet. It may seem to be an odd choice, but I have found that the predictable melody soothes Laila, so why not? More importantly, it has a limited range (which I need!), and I know all the words.

It also tells a story, and I could see that Connor was hanging on every word of the song as I sang it. He interrupted me halfway through:

"Mommy, what does that mean? 'Bombs killed his lady.' What does that mean?"

"Well, there was a war, and he lost his family," I replied, beginning to second-guess my choice of songs.

"Oh, that's sad," Connor said, his voice dropping.

When I finished the song, Connor said, "That's a sad song, Mommy."

"Well, it's sad, but in a way it's kind of happy too," I replied, this time convinced I had chosen the wrong song.

"But how is it happy?"

I fumbled for words. "It's a song about life. When we are young, we have big dreams about what we think we want. And then we may get sidetracked--maybe we find other fun things that make us forget our dreams, or maybe we have a family, and our family becomes more important. But at the end of life we see that, even though bad things may happen, or even though our life may not turn out the way we thought it would, there are good things about life, and we see how lucky we are have the good things."

"Dreams aren't real," Connor declared when I finished.

"There are two kinds of dreams," I explained. "A dream can be something you have while you're sleeping, and it can also be something that you wish for. For example, if you really want to be a firefighter when you grow up, then that would be your dream."

"Well, my dream is to be a Jedi-knight. Like Anakin Skywalker."

"Oh. What about having children someday? Would you want that too."

"Yes, but that can be the thing that I do when they're at school. My Mommy can work, and I'll just take Jedi-knight lessons."