A dream worth forgetting

This morning, very, very early this morning (3:42 a.m. to be exact), Peanut had a nightmare.

She raced into my room, her feet pounding on the hardwood, rousing me from sleep.

"I'm scared, Mommy, so scared," she whispered standing by my bedside. I lifted her into bed. She was trembling, actually trembling, and she reached over and clutched my right hand tightly with her left.

"It's OK, you're OK," I cooed to her in the dark. "You're with Mommy now. You're OK."

Still, for a long time whenever I glanced over at her, the moonlight spilled into the room just enough for me to see her eyes, wide and green, staring up at the ceiling. Every now and then she'd squeeze my fingers as if to be sure I was really there next to her.

I dozed lightly rousing every so often to look at her. Finally, near 5 a.m., she fell back to sleep. Her grip on my hand lightened, but she didn't fully let go. And sometime after that, I fell back to sleep too.

When I woke again, the room was bright with morning sun. Peanut was sitting up next to me quietly turning the pages of a book.

"Hey," I said to her. "Good morning."

She turned to me with a vibrant smile and eyes and placed her hand on my forearm. "Hi Mommy. I didn't think you'd ever wake up."

After a few more minutes I asked her about her dream.

"Do you remember what scared you last night?"

Her face went blank and she turned her eyes to the ceiling trying to recall what sent her to me in such a state.

"I don't know," she said after a few seconds, shrugging her shoulders. "I can't remember anymore."

The fear was gone and memory of it completely erased. It was the answer I was hoping for. I don't know what caused her to come running to me, shaking in the middle of the night. What alarmed her so much that it took over an hour for her to settle back to sleep. What made her cling to me for comfort. But I'm so glad that whatever terrified her so has been erased from her memory.

And with that, we rose and started a new day together.