The Fifth Day of Christmas

Dreams and Nightmares

I woke up because I’d been dreaming about my mum again.  At least this time it had been a happy dream.  In the dream we were sledging down the hill at the back of the tall grey tower block.  It was only a small slope really but in my dream it had been different, you know, like things are in dreams? Somehow I knew it was the hill behind where we used to live but in the dream it was longer.  I dreamt I was sitting on the front of the bright red sledge and Mum was sitting behind me, with me between her chubby legs. I felt safe leaning back against her, she felt soft and warm and her legs squeezed me gently, stopping me from falling off.  We were going really fast down the icy slope and I was screaming with excitement.  It was a little bit scary but not very because I knew Mum was there to keep me safe.

When I woke up I was still screaming.  It wasn’t the first time I’d been woken up by my own screams.   In fact it was always happening since that awful night.  That night that had changed everything and taken my mum away from me.  When the dreams were bad, which they usually were, they were full of all this noise and confusion and blood and screams, mine and Mum’s, and I would wake up crying and very scared.   The fear inside me would feel like a tight knot twisting up my insides. The knot would feel like it was slowly getting looser as I realised it was only a bad dream and I was safe in my warm bed.  The next part was the hardest because as I woke up it would kind of gradually creep up on me that although this time it was only a dream she was actually still gone.  In some ways the happy dreams hurt more than the nightmares in the end because they fooled me into believing she was back with me and everything was back to normal.

Gran had heard me screaming and before I was completely awake she was sitting on my bed ready to hold me.  As  I woke up and realised again that Mum was gone I threw my arms around Gran’s neck and sobbed into her bony shoulder.  She smelled of soap.  Her curly white hair stuck to my wet cheek.

She stroked my hair and whispered,

“Hush now, wee man.  Hush now, wee man” over and over again in her soft gentle way.

Her Scottish accent was much stronger than I remembered Mum’s being.  Eventually my sobs eased off. I clung on to Gran and she just held me until I was ready to stop.

“Oh Gran, your shoulder’s wet,” I said, lifting my head.

My voice sounded all thick and croaky.  She gave me a tissue out of the pocket of her blue dressing gown.

“What’s a wee bit of wet between friends?” she said kindly.  There was a sort of chuckle in her voice, but her eyes looked sad. I kind of knew it must be hard for Gran too, after all my mum was her daughter, but I didn’t actually know how she felt.  I wiped my eyes and blew my nose.  I was feeling a little bit better now.  Then it began to dawn on me that this was the day I had been dreading.  Today I was going to start at the village school.

“What time is it” I asked.

Not that I was in a hurry to get there. I just didn’t want to make things even worse by being late on my first day.

“It’s OK, it’s only just after 6 now.  Do you want to go back to sleep?” asked Gran.

I was still tired but scared of dreaming again.  I shook my head.  Gran stood up and held out her hand to me.

“C’m’on then”, she said.

I took Gran’s hand and got out of bed.  A few months ago I would have been embarrassed.  She treated me as if I was five instead of ten but between you and me these days I didn’t mind most of the time.  People often don’t realise how old I am because I’m so small but of course Gran did actually know I was ten.  Sometimes I felt like a five-year-old, crying so easily and waking up screaming, so it was actually quite nice to be cuddled and led by the hand sometimes.

We went through to the lou