My son is now four. Often on the way to daycare, Sebastian tells me about his dreams. Or rather, he tells me stories that he invents as we drive, and calls them dreams perhaps because he isn’t sure how else to name what it is that he’s doing. They involve fantastical journeys down sewer pipes that, in his dream world, are called “dreanies.” He flies, floats, drives, grows giant and shrinks small.
Then one morning he says, “I’ve run out of dreams, Mummy. Today I need to play a lot, so I can make more dreams and get good ideas.”
So, even though he cannot yet read, it occurs to me that Sebastian too is a writer in his own way.
My favourite dream is something he calls “World of Game.” It’s so complicated he can’t explain or even understand it. “No one can,” he adds.
Yes, writing can be like dreaming. When we create texts or tell stories, we go deep into ourselves to examine the things we can’t explain or understand until we find or write our way through our own puzzles and riddles. Each in our own World of Game. Each trying to understand the incomprehensible, and to explain the inexplicable.
“I still have many bad dreams,” explains Sebastian in his quirky English that comes from being bilingual. “It’s just my living.”
Telling his dreams is a way for my son to make sense of his life.
I write to do the same.
[Photo: DeeJayTee23]
