It's Funny What You Remember

As a child I had a reoccurring dream. It wasn't an every day dream or even an every month dream. It was just a dream once in awhile.

My mom and I were on a bus...a serious bus...like a Greyhound bus. The bus was full of people. In the dream I see two nuns sitting near the front. My mom and I were sitting in front of the nuns.

At some point, my mom hands me to one of the nuns. I resisted. I cried. I felt very stressed about it.


My mother walks to the back of the bus and that's about it, except she doesn't come back.


Weird huh?


Over the years, I mentioned this dream to my mom, to my dad, to anyone who was listening.


I stopped having the dream once I married and moved away. But a few years ago, maybe ten, I mentioned the dream again. It was at that point, that my mother kind of had an Ah Ha moment. This is what she told me.

When I was around the age in the picture above, but I think a little younger, I was playing, fell, and put a gash behind my ear. I bled and it was very traumatic for my young parents. They took me to an emergency room.

We lived in Joliet, Illinois so I imagine it was a hospital nearby.




The photo (above) was my home. (I wish I had it sitting in my backyard today, where I could restore it.)

My mother told me that it was a Catholic hospital and there were nuns everywhere. I was bleeding and needed to be looked at, so one of the nuns took me from my mother. Of course, I started to cry. (I am very attached to my mom...even today...and yes if you grab me from her I WILL cry. You are duly warned.) The nuns would not let my folks go with me. I cried and they could hear me, that probably made it worse on both parents and child, I imagine.

I had to have stitches behind my ear. And my parents had to fill out paperwork in the meantime to explain what had happened. The hospital was probably suspicious. Those silly people didn't know that either one of my good parents would have given their life for me... in a blink...even today. They are that good.

So here is my question. Did the trauma that I experienced, at that very young age, imprint upon my brain the image of nuns taking me from my mother on the bus? Was the reoccurring dream just really a memory? My psychologist daughter said in her learning years she read about people (I think she said really intelligent people, but I could be making that up) remembering things from when they were very young.

It's funny what you remember...huh?

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