What's your exam dream? What's the dream you dream that makes you wake up in a cold sweat of terror, followed quickly by a wash of relief that it wasn't real? I think for some people, their exam dream is about an actual exam. But for me, my exam dream - as I've come to realize in recent years - is about moving.
I dream that we find out that we have to move, and the moving day is tomorrow.
Even if moving day is long-planned, I dream that we wake up that morning and realize we haven't packed a thing.
I dream that I pack in a frantic hurry and end up with a suitcase full of neckties and coat hangers and baseball hats - not specifically those items, but items as useless as those.
I dream that it's time to go to the airport (to move, of course), and there are still drawers and closets and shelves full of our things and we have to leave them behind.
I dream that we are horrifically late for our departing flight to our new home and we miss it in spectacular, nightmarish fashion. And it's always undoable - there is never another flight or another arrangement to be made. That was it. We missed it.
I dream that we quit one job to go to another, move there, and it was all a misunderstanding and there was never a job there waiting for us, at all.
I dream that we move somewhere and upon arrival realize that we never made school arrangements for the children and the only spot left is in, like, an Urdu immersion program (which I would totally go for but since it's an exam dream, it's stressful).
I dream that we still live in Syria, and the reason we have to move is because the war has arrived on our doorstep and we have no choice. We neglect to pack, not because we forgot, or didn't plan, but because there is no time and we don't know where we're going, anyway. I dream in these dreams that I'm separated from the kids, that I have to entrust them to neighbors, that I didn't grab the right essentials in our rush to leave. When I wake up from this dream, I'm horrified, then relieved, then chilled to the bone to think that my nightmare is someone else's reality.
Well, that turned dark fast. We are speaking of nightmares, I suppose. This is my exam dream - moving. What's yours?