Double edged dream..

Paul had 'The Dream' . He's not had it before, though I have... and several friends have admitted they have had The Dream too. It's a lovely dream, until you wake up. Then it hurts, for a split second, so so badly.  Part of you wants to close your eyes and go back to The Dream, but part of you doesn't anyway, because of the hurt of waking up. The Dream is when Elin speaks. To Paul, last night, she said 'Daddy, I'm tired' so he put her on his shoulders to carry her. Even in his dream he says he knew what a momentous occasion it was. As though his psyche had allowed him to forget the impossibility of this, but not to forget WHY it was impossible and that it must be a miracle. In his dream he called me, again and again desperate to tell me that she spoke. That a door had opened, the possibilities of communication were now endless, she can speak..she can speak! He says he liked to hear her voice in his dream. He didn't seem as rattled by The Dream as I had been. He told Elin all about it.  I find myself admiring his resilience (is this a man/woman thing I wonder?) the ability to not ponder TOO deeply, to not get TOO maudlin, not to let The Dream get under your skin too much. But, as the day draws to a close I can hear him still, as he carries out Elin's bedtime routine with her, repeating 'Are you tired, Elin?' 'Are you trying to tell Daddy you're tired?' 'Say it Elle, go on Im tired Daddy!' he laughs and she laughs because he is laughing. But he keeps asking her. As if somehow he subconsciously believes his dream was a prophecy and a miracle could occur. Maybe The Dream did get him, after all, the juxtaposition of the elation and the heartache. How could it not. The stark truth, fleetingly realised in the seconds between asleep and wakefulness that the only time you will ever hear your daughter's voice, is in your dreams. Something hard to admit, even harder to live- but not something either of us want to stop dreaming about in reality, because we would take the heartache of waking every time. Just to be able to say, and feel 'She can speak..she can speak!'. Just to hear her voice.