...Fragile...

As a young child I suffered from nightmares. I woke up screaming or crying fairly often. This lasted until my mind kicked in with self-defense mechanisms and I stopped remembering any dreams at all. But the nightmares I had back then were often re-occurring, and I remember them well. I never told anyone what those nightmares were--I suppose it was too hard to explain as a little child. When the subject came up once at home while I was a teenager, I described to my family one of those re-occurring nightmares: the one I hated most...

...A dark room is, for a child, a frightful thing. It is terribly easy to imagine that all the things we fear are hiding in the darkness of that room. But think, then, of a dark room with only one light hanging from a ceiling you cannot see. And this light is not the light of day, nor of the silvery moon, nor is it a light full of warmth or comfort. This is a sterile light that does nothing but remind you of needles and shots. It fails to illuminate the dark, but turns your attention all the more to the shadows of the room, wherein death lurks.

Death, yes. I was terrified by death when I was little. Perhaps because I'd seen it. And so I have no doubt that death was indeed hiding in the room of my nightmare, though it made no appearance.

Instead, there was a counter-like table underneath the sterile light. Several men stood around the table in white coats, passing eggs from hand to hand. At either end of the table the eggs were put into large egg-crates stacked on the ground. As this scene unfolded before me, the men's hands would suddenly begin moving faster and faster. Faster. Faster still. Until their hands and the eggs they handled were all but a blur.

And it was at this point that I woke up either screaming or crying, or both...

Now, this may seem to you to be utterly ridiculous. A nightmare? You might ask, snickering. Certainly my family thought it rather silly. And yet, I can tell you truthfully that this was a nightmare, and it haunted me.

First there was the darkness and all that lived in it. Then there was the light that failed to pierce the shadows and brought with it a feeling reminiscent of the feeling of being unloved. And then, of course, there were the strange, silent, unknown men who wore sterile coats and whose legs seemed to blend with the darkness of the room. Lastly there was the work being done--fragile eggs passed from hand to hand and put into crates at an ever-increasing speed.

Tell me, you who snicker--mind, I do not blame you--, when you were a child what did you long for the most? What did you fear the most?

Perhaps you've never pondered this before.

But I've observed that children long to be loved more than anything, and to feel that they are loved. They most fear all that is inconsistent or seems to threaten their safety.

A lack of consistency is, for a child, a most terrifying thing. The feeling of being in danger or the promise of some pain to come is also a most frightening thing to face. And more than anything, a child longs to be loved and it is the feeling of being unloved that is the source of many, if not most, of a child's tears. And the feeling of being unloved is akin to that of being lost.

What child is not afraid of being lost?

Do you see now how such a dream was nightmarish for me?

I could not help but feel somehow that I was one of those thin-shelled eggs, unlovingly passed from hand to hand, threatened by the darkness, ignored by the light, fragile beyond belief and in increasing danger of being shattered and discarded...

This dream has never returned--no, not even when I began to remember dreams again after I entered high school.

Perhaps because it no longer has the power to paralyze me with fear.

For this time around I would not wake up in tears, but with a smile and a sigh--relieved; because I know now that all that is shattered is not necessarily lost.