Most of my nightmares involve sharks and crocodiles.  I’m often required, in the dream, to cross a marshy body of water, or jump from lilypad to lilypad.  I am always young.  Usually it seems to be some sort of expedition, and I’m responsible for the safety of everyone around me.  It doesn’t go well.
 
When I was a kid, I had five seconds to get from the lightswitch to the bed.  Five safe seconds before the crocodiles would swarm.  It was always crocodiles.
 
For the last two nights, Gavin has woken at 2 a.m., frightened.  Last night he told me, “I’m afraid to close my eyes.  I don’t want to dream.”
 
When I asked him about his dreams this morning, he told me one had a dragon in it.  “Chasing me,” he said.  And the other was a good dream. 
 
We are at the mercy of so much when we are little.  For our meals, and our rides, and our entertainment, and our comfort.  I have been wondering about his dragon, and whether or not it would help to tell him a story of vanquishing knights.  Maybe it’s more effective to make the monsters silly.  To laugh at what we fear, to make it ridiculous.  A shark lurking under a lilypad.  Preposterous.  Absurd.  Hardly frightening at all.