The Dream of Courage

Swan River

The two of them come bolting up the back stairs from the kitchen: a young boy who’s just finished his breakfast and his father chasing him, voice raised with a belittling name, having heard the boy talk in a manner that angers him. There’s a spanking with no sound from the boy.

Ten years later, the father spends nights applying hot packs to the boy’s legs aching from sports.

Forty years later his most often repeated praise of his son is that he is a good father.

Barbara on Cape Cod (Prema)

Fifty years later I dream that I see this scene and move to stand in front of the boy. Facing the father, I say you will NOT hit him. The father starts to move and I repeat my words more strongly. I have awakened from another dream; it is the dream of unconsciousness. I have found my missing courage.

The new mother of a six-year-old girl, searching near the beach cottage, worries, not finding her, and heads toward where the daughter has been told not to go. She spies her small daughter beside the marshes and the river curving to the ocean. At the cottage, afraid for her, she spanks her and sends her to her room. The mother now sees what she cannot undo through the eyes of her daughter. Barely with them two months, she hasn’t understood being in danger.

A year later, in the mother’s parents’ living room, she asks her daughter to dance with her. She says no, and the mother slaps her face—so out of character—and is chastised by her mother, upset watching, who softly moans oh for her daughter and small granddaughter. Forty-two years of love later, I understand that my new daughter was strong and independent, adventuresome and brave.

My realization is, “With the courage of facing ourselves comes opportunity for new consciousness.”