The interpretation of dreams

My most prominent impression of my niece, Abigail, is her incredible love for imaginative play. For several years she loved nothing better than to recruit adults to take roles in the elaborate scenes she had created, often based on books or recent experiences. We were patients at her hospital, March sisters in Little Women, or sea creatures in the ocean. A few minor props and she could transform herself into another being and the living room into another world. For her third birthday we were members of the VonTrapp family in Austria; the next year, when Abigail's mother had a newborn infant to care for, Tom and I had the challenge of organizing a fourth birthday party around a combined Ingalls-Alcott-Grimms theme. Abigail is in first grade now and quieter about asking adults to play along, but I suspect her imagination is as rich as ever.

Now Edith seems to be moving into the void. Her pretend play is taking off, and she seeks to take her parents and any other willing parties along with her. Only so far, her imaginary scenarios remain rather mysterious to an outsider, taking on the surreal character of a dream world. As in a classic anxiety dream, the games have seemingly arbitrary rules that you are supposed to understand but don't, leading to mild panic: Stand on that line in the sidewalk...no THAT line. Now the Person in Charge stands on this line at a perfectly perpendicular angle to you...then suddenly turns in a circle and demands that you say "2 schoolbuses." You say 2 schoolbuses, only be told, "No, 4 schoolbuses. Now say 4 schoolbuses, then I say 4 schoolbuses." So you say 4 schoolbuses, but instead of repeating the line, the Person in Charge says "1 schoolbus" and laughs like crazy.

Other times the pretend play is more in the nature of acting out a scene, one that starts out recognizable enough but slowly morphs in ways that you only dimly realize are bizarre. On a dog walk the other day, Edith picked up a rock and announced it was a wolf. She set it down on the path, picked up a smaller rock, announced it was a bird, and put it close to the first rock, explaining that it was circling the wolf's head. I realized we were in Peter and the Wolfland and was immediately on top of things. Except not. She picked up a rock for a duck and a rock for a cat and placed them. Then she picked up a stick and announced it was the gate to grandfather's garden. Only as she put it down, it suddenly became someone or something squeezing under the gate, rather than the gate itself. Then it seemed that Bismarck was the wolf and Edith was Peter, and we were chasing the wolf, trying to bring him into the garden. Then I learned that Edith saw two wolves, not one, and that they had been in her classroom at school on Sunday...

Things were a little more recognizable last night at 7:30, when I pulled up at home at the end of a long day. I got out of my car to be greeted by a small voice somewhere in the trees, "We're at the zoo! Come see the wolf!" Edith-Peter and Daddy-Hunter had apparently paraded Bismarck-Wolf to the zoo and were now enjoying themselves there, feeding the animals. I fed some tigers and hippos, once they were pointed out to me. Ironically, Edith's games seem to assume a more rational dimension in dark than in daylight.

Pouring Mommy some tea on the sidewalk