Hiroshi
Like all dreams, the beginning's a lot fuzzier than the end.
I had a son, a child, an infant in my care. I was a single dad, and I can't recall now which was right because I remember it two ways: a drunken one-night stand followed and sperm-donation, either way resulting in "congrats you're a father." (This all might make more sense if I were a woman and bore the kid myself; my dream wasn't particularly concerned with gestation or maternity, though.) Either way I didn't know the mother, I think it was a friend of Pat's. Or of someone's. I was one (full) degree of separation away from them and had no memory of meeting them, despite... you know, making a baby. She was Japanese. The kids name was Hiroshi. He was my son.
So my life revolved entirely around this kid, mostly helpless, and I loved teaching him about the world, watching how fast he would learn words and ideas and apply them. When I saw other kids I put Hiroshi on the ground and let him walk up to them to interact naturally, without my getting involved. Pretty much the rest of the time, I was carrying him and talking to him about the world, explaining this or that. He was always barefoot so I didn't let him walk around much, but this (in the dream at least) wasn't coddling; it was practical.
Things were great for a while, and I occasionally got really sad to think he'd never have a mommy, thinking about how I loved my own mom and wouldn't want to have to grow up lacking that. I wondered if I could get back in touch with his mom, force her back into his life. I didn't want to do it against her will, but I wanted Hiroshi to have the joy of a mom and a dad.
But then, I saw he'd gotten dirty playing in the dirt or something, and I took him to the sink to help wash him off. The stuff on his face wasn't dirt, though... (you'll forgive me, in all honesty, if I have a hard time expressing the rest of this dream) It was some kind of contusion or bruising, some condition or other, and I asked him, Hey buddy are you okay? He mumbled inarticulately that he felt cold. And then I watched as his face blew up like a balloon. His eye sockets turned black and swollen. I freaked - the fuck - out. I yelled to the first person I could think of, my father, and he was there, and we were in my childhood house on Poplar Court. I couldn't tell you if he'd been there previously or if that's where I'd been a moment ago or not. "Dad, what do I do?" I called out, unable to leave him, holding him. He was both withering away, becoming impossibly small and frail, and bloating disgustingly as I watched. My son was clearly dying.
My father said we needed to get to the hospital, and something about how an ambulance would take too long, we'll take a van (possible dream-reference to The Faint's "Take Me To The Hospital"? Weird timing). We go outside to wait, my child is now small enough I can hold him in one hand, his body is distorted, with too-long bony legs, tiny bent-back arms, and a face that looks like a snout. More and more he is becoming the Eraserhead baby. I can't think about anything, my focus is so sharp on what's happening to Hiroshi in my hand. We stand on grand marble steps, as though outside a Capitol Building, and watch a parade of tanks go by excruciatingly slowly, blocking traffic in all directions. Hiroshi is twitching violently, and I'm trying delicately to hold him down with my thumb, afraid to squeeze his little body. His left arm snaps off at the shoulder. The veins and muscles and bones protruding are shriveled up like loose wires. I am thinking to myself, "he'll have to go through life with his legs too long and only one arm, but he'll live. This isn't what I wanted for my boy. This isn't okay at all. Why is this happening?"
There is something in there where the mother is a Japanese prostitute and on my way to wait for an ambulance (or van) we pass her and I just know it's her, and I poke my head in as she's about to be with a Japanese businessman client, and I think to myself, this would be an amusingly poorly-timed hello if not for our son dying. This would be a tension-breaking scene in a comedy, if this weren't a tragedy right now. There is something else where my family and I were going to a movie with little Hiroshi. I think that's when I put the little guy down and let him wander over to other kids and say hello, but I forget.
Pat shows up while we are waiting for the tank parade and while I'm watching my son's face expand like it's going to burst, looking more reptilian and less human and wondering if he'll ever be okay again. In fact, I know he won't be. I'm holding my son and he's not moving anymore and I don't know if he's dead but I know it's too late, that no ambulance or van or anything is going to show up in time and no hospital is going to save him, and I've watched my child go from adorable thinker to deformed object to lifeless plastic doll in my hands, and Hiroshi is gone, and I am just sobbing, freaked out, completely untethered. Do I take him home? He's so tiny I could throw him away in a public trash can and nobody would find him. He's so inhuman looking, my boy, nobody would recognize him anyway if they did. What do I do with this thing and how do I keep on going having lived through this kind of experience?
And then a cat meows.
Spacecat is outside my bedroom door, and I am groggy in bed, squinting at the clock on my wall. 8:35. I have to be at work at 9. It's a 30 minute drive (or longer, with construction), and Spacecat is hungry for breakfast. And I have no son. I never did have a son. Nobody died tiny and bloated and broken in my hand.
I cannot express to you how much I hate that I just lived through that in a dream. Or how hard it was to pull myself out of the resulting funk and get my ass dressed and in my car in any kind of a hurry. It's amazing how little it seems to matter if you're late to work when you're trying to wrap your head around the fact that you don't even have a son to be dead.
And thus began my day.
(Edited to add: this is my second dream in two months about having a son. Whatever that means.)
I had a son, a child, an infant in my care. I was a single dad, and I can't recall now which was right because I remember it two ways: a drunken one-night stand followed and sperm-donation, either way resulting in "congrats you're a father." (This all might make more sense if I were a woman and bore the kid myself; my dream wasn't particularly concerned with gestation or maternity, though.) Either way I didn't know the mother, I think it was a friend of Pat's. Or of someone's. I was one (full) degree of separation away from them and had no memory of meeting them, despite... you know, making a baby. She was Japanese. The kids name was Hiroshi. He was my son.
So my life revolved entirely around this kid, mostly helpless, and I loved teaching him about the world, watching how fast he would learn words and ideas and apply them. When I saw other kids I put Hiroshi on the ground and let him walk up to them to interact naturally, without my getting involved. Pretty much the rest of the time, I was carrying him and talking to him about the world, explaining this or that. He was always barefoot so I didn't let him walk around much, but this (in the dream at least) wasn't coddling; it was practical.
Things were great for a while, and I occasionally got really sad to think he'd never have a mommy, thinking about how I loved my own mom and wouldn't want to have to grow up lacking that. I wondered if I could get back in touch with his mom, force her back into his life. I didn't want to do it against her will, but I wanted Hiroshi to have the joy of a mom and a dad.
But then, I saw he'd gotten dirty playing in the dirt or something, and I took him to the sink to help wash him off. The stuff on his face wasn't dirt, though... (you'll forgive me, in all honesty, if I have a hard time expressing the rest of this dream) It was some kind of contusion or bruising, some condition or other, and I asked him, Hey buddy are you okay? He mumbled inarticulately that he felt cold. And then I watched as his face blew up like a balloon. His eye sockets turned black and swollen. I freaked - the fuck - out. I yelled to the first person I could think of, my father, and he was there, and we were in my childhood house on Poplar Court. I couldn't tell you if he'd been there previously or if that's where I'd been a moment ago or not. "Dad, what do I do?" I called out, unable to leave him, holding him. He was both withering away, becoming impossibly small and frail, and bloating disgustingly as I watched. My son was clearly dying.
My father said we needed to get to the hospital, and something about how an ambulance would take too long, we'll take a van (possible dream-reference to The Faint's "Take Me To The Hospital"? Weird timing). We go outside to wait, my child is now small enough I can hold him in one hand, his body is distorted, with too-long bony legs, tiny bent-back arms, and a face that looks like a snout. More and more he is becoming the Eraserhead baby. I can't think about anything, my focus is so sharp on what's happening to Hiroshi in my hand. We stand on grand marble steps, as though outside a Capitol Building, and watch a parade of tanks go by excruciatingly slowly, blocking traffic in all directions. Hiroshi is twitching violently, and I'm trying delicately to hold him down with my thumb, afraid to squeeze his little body. His left arm snaps off at the shoulder. The veins and muscles and bones protruding are shriveled up like loose wires. I am thinking to myself, "he'll have to go through life with his legs too long and only one arm, but he'll live. This isn't what I wanted for my boy. This isn't okay at all. Why is this happening?"
There is something in there where the mother is a Japanese prostitute and on my way to wait for an ambulance (or van) we pass her and I just know it's her, and I poke my head in as she's about to be with a Japanese businessman client, and I think to myself, this would be an amusingly poorly-timed hello if not for our son dying. This would be a tension-breaking scene in a comedy, if this weren't a tragedy right now. There is something else where my family and I were going to a movie with little Hiroshi. I think that's when I put the little guy down and let him wander over to other kids and say hello, but I forget.
Pat shows up while we are waiting for the tank parade and while I'm watching my son's face expand like it's going to burst, looking more reptilian and less human and wondering if he'll ever be okay again. In fact, I know he won't be. I'm holding my son and he's not moving anymore and I don't know if he's dead but I know it's too late, that no ambulance or van or anything is going to show up in time and no hospital is going to save him, and I've watched my child go from adorable thinker to deformed object to lifeless plastic doll in my hands, and Hiroshi is gone, and I am just sobbing, freaked out, completely untethered. Do I take him home? He's so tiny I could throw him away in a public trash can and nobody would find him. He's so inhuman looking, my boy, nobody would recognize him anyway if they did. What do I do with this thing and how do I keep on going having lived through this kind of experience?
And then a cat meows.
Spacecat is outside my bedroom door, and I am groggy in bed, squinting at the clock on my wall. 8:35. I have to be at work at 9. It's a 30 minute drive (or longer, with construction), and Spacecat is hungry for breakfast. And I have no son. I never did have a son. Nobody died tiny and bloated and broken in my hand.
I cannot express to you how much I hate that I just lived through that in a dream. Or how hard it was to pull myself out of the resulting funk and get my ass dressed and in my car in any kind of a hurry. It's amazing how little it seems to matter if you're late to work when you're trying to wrap your head around the fact that you don't even have a son to be dead.
And thus began my day.
(Edited to add: this is my second dream in two months about having a son. Whatever that means.)