Dream Magic

Tonight we had our very good, most beloved friends, Katie and Aaron, and their two-year-old twins, Elijah and Aryeh, over for dinner. A friendship that started before Katie and I even met Lena or Aaron (who also already knew each other from high school) has only grown stronger through the years of fun couple-against-couple pinochle games, our small, quiet weddings, and the miracle of us each ending up with a set of twin boys. We still stare in disbelief at each other over the chaos of our dinner table full of FIVE hungry sons and exclaim over the unlikeliness of it all. Surely if someone had whispered a hint of this future to us during one of our many shared dinners in college, we would have declared it impossible.



Katie and Aaron actually didn't know that they were having twins until Aryeh--the second baby, not a placenta--was born, and when Katie called to tell me the news minutes later, I was 100% sure that she was joking. Just weeks before, while organizing all of the two-of-everything, hand-me-down baby clothes we had lent her, she had said to me, "I keep having to remind myself that I'm not having twin boys!" And really, what are the chances that it would have worked out this way? But I truly am just so grateful that Katie and Aaron are on this crazy journey with us. How lucky for us all. How amazing and crazy and perfect.


We try to get our broods together at least once a week or so, assuming that none of the children are potentially contagious with the dreaded stomach bug (which Katie and I are both Totally Paranoid about), and despite all the age differences, the kids have all fallen in love with each other just as we hoped that they would. Tonight, however, Lukas and Jasper were in "rare form." "Rare form" is a code phrase that Lena and I use to mean something along the lines of "absolutely insane and in danger of being thrown out the window." Luke and Jaz had been playing outside with the neighbor kids pretty much all day, and we'd mostly forgotten to feed them. Rule #1 for keeping our kids from collapsing into "rare form" is:

Keep them well fed

We also kept them up really late last night, since we stayed in Boston until 8:30 p.m. hoping that they would fall asleep on the way home. Instead they stayed awake for the entire 2-hour-drive (actually Jaz fell asleep almost exactly 1 mile from our house), which meant that they only got 9 hours of sleep last night, a blatant violation of Rule #2:

Keep them well rested

So it really shouldn't have been any surprise to find the boys in an extreme state of "rare form" just in time for all nine of us to sit down to (a slightly late, but totally delicious) dinner. Jaz was having an especially hard time and couldn't stop screaming and crying (he didn't want to say good-bye to the neighbors, he was mad at me for not letting him eat rice cakes with his friends instead of coming in for dinner, he didn't like what we were having for dinner, and he just couldn't stop crying). As he finally gave into his overwhelming hunger and started eating, the rise in blood sugar corresponded to an immediate improvement in personality. We began to catch glimpses of the boy we know. He stopped crying. Eli smiled and exclaimed, "Jaz is happy now!" which, of course, prompted Jaz to growl in his direction and start crying again. Lukas was in a slightly more controlled but equally unpleasant funk, and it was clear that the only thing to do was to put them both to bed.

Katie and Aaron are, in some ways, at an advantage in our relationship in that, having had their twin sons 2-and-a-half years after we had ours, they are on the receiving end of hand-me-down clothes, toilet training tips and our (untrained) medical advice. Most everything that they go through with their twins, we've already been through with ours. On the other hand, they've been given the--perhaps unfortunate--gift of getting a glimpse into their future by witnessing what we go through with our kids. They've been robbed of the first-time parents' naive assumption that it only gets easier as the kids get older. Thanks to us, they've been prematurely informed of the truth. As the kids get older, things just get more complicated, confusing, and challenging. And I always feel bad when our innocent friends (and their impressionable children) have to be privy to such horrors as the scene that went down at dinner tonight (though really, it's hard to imagine the sweetness of 2-year-old Eli and Aryeh ever turning into the moodiness of 5-year-old Jasper and Lukas . . . maybe Katie and Aaron will luck out after all).

Getting the boys upstairs and in pajamas with their teeth brushed all happened to the soundtrack of much screaming and crying. I had clicked over into all-business, super-fed-up-mama mode and so there was no joyful tooth brushing game or joking about putting pajama pants on the arms instead of the legs. It only took me about 3 minutes to get both tear-streaked kids ready and in bed. And, then . . . then, it was time for me to perform Dream Magic.

I can't remember exactly when I started doing Dream Magic. It was long enough ago that both Jasper and Lukas took me at my word when I said that I could do magic to help them have good dreams. They still believe in it--in me--wholeheartedly, but now there are more questions.

"Why are you so magical, mom?"
"But how did you get to know how to do this magic?"
"Are you really sure that this is magic?"

No, not really sure, but I'm becoming more convinced with time. Dream magic consists of me placing my hand on the boys' heads (one at a time) while they lie in bed, just before they fall asleep. I pour every little bit of good energy that I can into them--mostly I just think about how much I love them--and imagine it filling their dreams with sweetness. So far it's worked out quite well. I don't recall that the boys have ever had bad dreams after a dose of dream magic at bedtime. These days, I have to do dream magic every night, thanks again to the loveliness of the movie Hook.

And on nights like tonight, it's a task that is especially daunting. I forced myself to push all of the frustration out of my mind and take a deep breath. I placed my hand on Lukas' head and tried to let the good energy flow. Slowly, but surely, the twisted muddle of my anger and impatience gave way to love, and I felt Luke's body relax under my hand. After a minute or two, I brushed his damp bangs to the side and kissed his forehead before moving on to Jaz.

"I don't think the Dream Magic is going to work tonight," Jasper whimpered, "I know I'm going to have bad dreams."

"Of course it will work, baby."

"But you're so mad at me. You don't love me. It's not going to work."

I was struck by his accusation, not just because of the heart-breaking enormity of such a statement, but because I hadn't realized until then that he knows what the dream magic is about. He's somehow figured out that the Magic is Love.

"Of course I love you. I always love you. Even when I'm angry and frustrated, I always, always love you. Nothing can ever change that. And the Dream Magic will definitely work."

I sifted my fingers through his hair and rested them on the top of his head. The love flowed easily then, and Jasper accepted it and his body became peacefully still. And I felt the same kind of warm peace spreading inside myself. And it was then that I realized that Dream Magic can do more than just keep bad dreams at bay. Way more.