This morning I had an out of body experience. Kids were doing normal kid stuff, meanwhile I was showing a full set of venomous teeth. After watching my very ugly grumpy self from what felt like afar I would simmer down and try to “talk nice.” But My! That monster me is pretty big and stormy when it wants to be. My own time outs were just not cutting it today. I need to have the really nice, lovely, sweet, fun, wonderful me come back and re-inhabit this body and send monster mom far away.

Funny how I feel like I am watching myself act horribly and I end up saying, “Oh no! Don’t do that!” But it is like talking to a ridiculous character on the TV who who goes ahead and does just what everyone knows they should NOT.

Jokes aside– It is difficult not to feel like you are the center of the universe. I think my thoughts and feel my feelings all day everyday. No matter how many times I empathize with others the chapters in their Book of Life seem to go on reading blank unless I am with them–whereas since mine is open all the time it feels like it is the only one. (I have never been very good at reading more than one book at a time).

Anyway… So Chad and I hear a BOOM CRASH WAIL in the middle of the night. Chad bolts up and grabs Alden. Just looking at Chad’s face I knew he was asleep. He was seeing a completely different scene all around us than I was. The terror he saw was written all over his face. I NEVER want to see him like that again.

I grabbed a crying Eden off of the floor where she had fallen out of bed (the BOOM CRASH WAIL). Chad was still trying to will Alden back to life. Was Alden crying? I don’t remember. But Chad’s face had fallen. The light in his eyes, the strength and confidence in his figure–really everything everyone sees in Chad–was far away.

I have often felt overwhelmed by what would happen to my life–to me–if anything happened to one of the kids or Chad. I have wondered if losing me would put much of a dent at all in Chad’s life. He is so self-assured. I will never wonder again. And he needed me. I was the one who could talk him down and give him the support he needed. Sometimes I feel like Chad does all the giving and I do all the taking. As much as I am haunted by his fragile image holding Alden in the night, I am comforted to know that he needs me and I am what he needs.

I had the worst nightmare at Lake Powell. At about 1:30 am, Eden fell out of her bunk. We heard the thump and then the crying. I think that startled Alden awake, and so he was crying. I jumped out of bed. I was on my feet, but that’s when I was having the nightmare. I thought that something terrible had happened to Alden. It looked like something in his crib had fatally injured him. I pulled him out and held him. Up close, I couldn’t see anything wrong with his body, but I was still sure that there was a big problem. Elisa saw how scared I was, and she was saying, “Don’t, Don’t.” That made me more scared. I sat there holding Alden until I calmed down. My skin was stretched tight enough around my forehead that just remembering that sensation was enough to send my heart racing again a few days later.

Elisa and I moved to houseboat’s main room. Half an hour later, I tried to walk back towards the crib again, but just getting near it made all my hair stand on end. Being in the same room provoked a physical reaction that I still couldn’t control. The room was filled with a palpable personality, saying, “Here Be Nightmares.”

Elisa and I talked for a little while about how grateful we are that our kids are alive and healthy. I cried, and that doesn’t happen often. If something happened to my family, I know it would upend my world.