Daddy Magic
I think my daughter learned an important lesson this week, sometimes it is better not to know. She has nightmares (so she says, but it might be attention seeking, but since I can’t peel back her skull and look into her head (ok, that’s icky!), I will have to just go with what she says). At camp this summer she made a “dream catcher,” you take a stick and bend it into a circle and then crisscross with string making a kind of web. Bad dreams are supposed to get caught in the string and let you sleep in peace. She was very excited to have this; she thought it would solve her problems. It didn’t work. One night she told me “Daddy, I think I know what the problem with my dream catcher is, the wholes are too big and the scary dreams keep getting through.”
Now I have my faults (that could be a whole long list, 1…..naw will save that for another time) but I do love my daughter and hate to see her upset (unless I am the one causing it, then it is of course justified) so I preformed some “daddy magic.” She is also one of these people who if there is one mosquito in a room of 100 people she will be the one to get bitten, over and over again. One night when she woke up from a nightmare I joked that bad dreams seem to get her like a swarm of mosquitoes, so what she needs is some “Nightmare Repellent.”
Not knowing where one can buy “Nightmare Repellent” I made some. Well I did not make the repellent, just the label. I took a can of “Canned Air” that I use for cleaning computers and made up a label that said “Nightmare Repellent - 100% Guaranteed to keep away scary dreams!” and glued it on to the can (it looked pretty good, if I do say so myself). That night I gave it to her and right before she went to sleep we sprayed some over her bed to keep the bad dreams away.
It worked, no bad dreams that night, or the next, or the next. Then the next night just after we sprayed the repellent she asks “daddy, where did you get this?” and I tell her it is daddy magic and she should not ask. But she keeps asking and pressing me for an answer, and after a while for some unknown reason I tell her, 10 minutes later she is crying to my wife, she looked behind the curtain, she bit the apple, she wanted to go back, she wanted to un-know, because now the magic was gone, it was just air and illusion.
And yet tonight we sprayed “Nightmare Repellent” over her bed, she knows it is not real but she also knows that I made it for her, it is not just air, it is air with love, and that is the daddy magic that won’t go away. She sleeps better knowing that and so do I.
I think my daughter learned an important lesson this week, sometimes it is better not to know. She has nightmares (so she says, but it might be attention seeking, but since I can’t peel back her skull and look into her head (ok, that’s icky!), I will have to just go with what she says). At camp this summer she made a “dream catcher,” you take a stick and bend it into a circle and then crisscross with string making a kind of web. Bad dreams are supposed to get caught in the string and let you sleep in peace. She was very excited to have this; she thought it would solve her problems. It didn’t work. One night she told me “Daddy, I think I know what the problem with my dream catcher is, the wholes are too big and the scary dreams keep getting through.”
Now I have my faults (that could be a whole long list, 1…..naw will save that for another time) but I do love my daughter and hate to see her upset (unless I am the one causing it, then it is of course justified) so I preformed some “daddy magic.” She is also one of these people who if there is one mosquito in a room of 100 people she will be the one to get bitten, over and over again. One night when she woke up from a nightmare I joked that bad dreams seem to get her like a swarm of mosquitoes, so what she needs is some “Nightmare Repellent.”
Not knowing where one can buy “Nightmare Repellent” I made some. Well I did not make the repellent, just the label. I took a can of “Canned Air” that I use for cleaning computers and made up a label that said “Nightmare Repellent - 100% Guaranteed to keep away scary dreams!” and glued it on to the can (it looked pretty good, if I do say so myself). That night I gave it to her and right before she went to sleep we sprayed some over her bed to keep the bad dreams away.
It worked, no bad dreams that night, or the next, or the next. Then the next night just after we sprayed the repellent she asks “daddy, where did you get this?” and I tell her it is daddy magic and she should not ask. But she keeps asking and pressing me for an answer, and after a while for some unknown reason I tell her, 10 minutes later she is crying to my wife, she looked behind the curtain, she bit the apple, she wanted to go back, she wanted to un-know, because now the magic was gone, it was just air and illusion.
And yet tonight we sprayed “Nightmare Repellent” over her bed, she knows it is not real but she also knows that I made it for her, it is not just air, it is air with love, and that is the daddy magic that won’t go away. She sleeps better knowing that and so do I.