Week Six | 1,572 words
Hold Your Horses
We are all in bed, three spoons in order of size. I am
cuddled up to my son Izak, eight years old, a skinny little enigma. One minute
he is so serious, pulling apart words, phrases and off the cuff remarks with
all of the concentration and irritating logic of a practiced lawyer. The next
moment he is running, howling for the fun of it, in fits of giggles, blisters
of tantrums. The tantrums, thankfully, are pretty few and far between, and are
usually the result of me forgetting he is only eight. That direct gaze is
deceptive, and lulls me into expecting more of him than is probably fair.
Izak is cuddled up to Abi, my daughter. She is five, a quiet
little thing with a cheeky smile. I can see the edges of it creeping around her
thumb (I am desperately trying and failing to get her to stop sucking it…)
whenever she is happy. If she’s not with me or Izak she becomes a guarded
child, watching everyone with a slightly suspicious squint and a tension in her
body that I always want to cuddle and soothe out of her. But she has started
school now, and I can’t be there every moment to ease the everyday fears away - and if only these were the only fears that Abi has to deal
with.
The dreams had started a little over a week ago. There were
no changes to routine, to our lifestyles, or to our family dynamic. One night,
all of a sudden, she began screaming and couldn’t stop. Her eyes were wide
open, her hands clenched and unclenched into tiny fragile fists. She wasn’t
awake. I tried desperately to soothe her, whispering calm words that turned
into scared shouts. Izak had wandered in, full of sleep and alarm. Abi was sat
bolt upright, light from the hallway casting a sharp line of light across her
face. I had been trying to pick her up for a few minutes, wondering how she
might react, anxious that she might thrash suddenly and do us both an injury.
All of a sudden the screaming stopped; she blinked, gulped, and burst into
tears. Izak scooped Lady O, Abi’s favourite toy, from the floor, and thrust her
into Abi’s lap as I sat down beside her, cuddled her to me, and stroked her
hair.
Having delivered Lady O, an elephant whose ear was now being
sucked between hiccups and the echoes of sobs, Izak left the room, and came
back a minute or two later with a glass of water and Abi’s favourite crazy
drinking straw. Having set his sister up with the essentials he gave her a
weary smile that made her face crack open into a relieved grin, and went back
to bed.
After this it only took one read through of “Mr Magnolia”
(an old but firm favourite) to get Abi to snuggle under her covers, clutch Lady
O to her chest, and her eyes to flutter closed.
I assumed this nightmarish session had been triggered by
something she had inadvertently seen – whether on telly, at school, on the
street… It is impossible to blinker your children from everything, good or bad,
that the world has to offer. My heart sank the next night when it all started
again.
This time it seemed to take forever for her to wake up from
the grip of the dream. She shook and moaned, tears leaked from her eyes that
were either achingly wide open, or squeezed tightly shut. Once again my voice
slid from a calm plea to a desperate insistence that she wake up. When she
finally did I am positive it was nothing to do with me. Whatever nightmare had
held her had simply decided to let her go. Exhausted and afraid she slumped
back into bed whilst I cuddled up, Izak retrieved the elephant and the drink, and
none of us had any explanations.
At breakfast the next morning dark circles had appeared
under Abi’s eyes. She was pale and exhausted from the physical and emotional
toll of the dreams. Izak frowned at her with concern as he spooned Cheerios
into his mouth.
“I think we’ll try no telly today,” I said brightly, as if
this was an adventurous idea we should all be embracing with enthusiasm. No
luck there. Instead Abi gulped and
proceeded to cry slow heavy tears into her cereal.
“It’s not the telly,” she whined.
“It can’t hurt to try,” I told her.
“What is it if it’s not the telly?” Izak wanted to know. Abi
sniffed at him.
“I don’t know.” She gave me a somewhat baleful look over her
bowl, “but it isn’t the television.”
“They’re really bad nightmares, Abi,” I told her, “so we
have to try a few things to work out what is triggering them. And if we can’t
work it out ourselves we’ll have to see a doctor if they don’t stop.”
This started the tears again. Abi hates our doctor for
reasons she is reluctant to share but which she once told Izak had something to
do with nose hair.
Izak shrugged. “I bet I can totally do a night without
telly. I bet there’s loads of things we can do instead. What did you used to do
Mum? In the old days, I mean. Before there was telly?”
I bit back my retort that I was not so old that I pre-dated
television, and instead started to list rainy day games I had enjoyed as a
child, tried to remember what board games we had mouldering away in the loft,
and wondered if I had completely erased the rules to any card games.
That night the television remained black and lifeless.
Instead we played music, sang, danced, built a den, played Huff the Donkey – a
peculiar card game that no-one outside of our family seems to know – and laughed
and talked and laughed some more. Abi was so full of smiles and giggles by the
time I put her to bed that I was convinced we had solved this particular
problem. How could such a sleepily content child suffer bad dreams?
“Do you think it will work?” Izak asked when I came back
downstairs.
“I hope so,” I said.
“It was fun anyway,” he said with a smile, and helped me
demolish the den and put the various blankets, table cloths and clothes pegs
away.
“Why are they called after horses?” he asked as we gathered
the playing cards together.
“Why are what called after horses?”
“Nightmares.”
This was typical of my son – pulling a word apart to try and
discern a bigger meaning behind it, some hidden clue into how we communicate,
how our language fundamentally worked.
I didn’t have an answer, but any guess I could have given
him was interrupted by more screaming from upstairs.
The dent in our confidence was the worst thing. We had had
such a lovely evening, had felt so victorious in our battle against whatever it
was, and it had made no difference at all.
Izak glared at the nightmare from Abi’s bedroom doorway, and
waited for it to pass. It seemed to take forever. He had collected Lady O from
the corner of the room, and was hugging her to his chest, scowling at Abi’s
pain and fear. His expression vanished in the moment Abi finally wrenched
herself awake and collapsed into my arms.
“Mum,” Izak said from the doorway, “can we sleep in your bed
tonight?”
“Yes. Absolutely.” I pulled Abi to me, her hot and sodden
nightdress clinging to her. “Let’s get you in some clean pyjamas, and then we’re
all cuddling up together.” Alarmingly, tears sprang to my eyes and my voice
shook. The unusual sight of me about to cry set Abi off again, and Izak
abruptly left the room.
“This is no good,” I said to Abi as I pulled her nightie
over her head and rummaged in her drawers for clean nightwear, “we’re just
going to get you all soggy again.”
“We need TISSUES!” Abi shouted. Abi’s theory about “how to
stop crying” consists of shouting the last word of every sentence until you
feel better. I had no better ideas, and responded with; “You’re RIGHT!
TISSUES!”
And, at last, our sniffy tears turned to sniffy sniggers.
Finally, all wrapped up in clean pyjamas, hair brushed again
for good luck, Lady O firmly grasped in both hands, we went to my bedroom. Izak
had remade the bed after my hurried exit, and had thoughtfully placed Abi’s
glass of water (with the requisite crazy straw) and a box of tissues on the
bedside table.
We all climbed in. Me, then Izak, then Abi. We cuddled up. I
wished, knowing it would ultimately be a bad idea, that we could do this more
often. My little family, all nestled together, comfortable and relaxed as we
drifted off to sleep.
Dawn was sliding up to the windows and peering around the curtains
when Abi began twitching. She cried out. But Izak cuddled up to her, squeezed
her shoulder and whispered “hold your horses” into her ear. Abi sighed, woeful,
but calm. I rolled towards them. Izak’s soft curls brushed my cheek and I
dropped a soft kiss on his head.
“Hold your horses,
Abi,” he whispered, “Hold them back.”
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