Night Errors

Tell me what you know about dreams
Tell me what you know about them night terrors - nothing

I was driving down Melbourne Street yesterday. Its a cafe district with a few too-expensive boutique shops for food and clothing. It was quietly humming this day with a few people around enjoying the public holiday. The Women's and Children's Hospital is nearby and often I see (predominantly) young mothers and families walking in the area going to checkups or for other less routine things. Because its a specialist hospital of such a significant size, its always a bit of a dichotomy in terms of who goes there. Its either going to be for things like the child's 18 month vaccinations, or its going to be a visit to see whether the 7 year old's leukemia has come back - the mundane or the horrifying.

I find myself looking at these people walking up Melbourne Street and wondering just what they're thinking and how they're feeling. Its an area of life I can confidently say I know nothing about (having children and the associated experiences) and as usual with these things I'm intensely curious in ways that border on the intellectually voyeuristic. I can't help it - I'm a nerd for life.

This day however, I was not thinking of childhood cancer or the ridiculous opposition to the MMR vaccines. I was thinking about very little other than my desire for an imported Cherry Coke from the boutique food place - Cherry Coke not being freely available in this nation - and the potential for rain later in the afternoon. As I drove and pondered nothing I glanced out the window and saw a man and a woman walking on the pavement toward the hospital. They were both smartly dressed, him in what looked like dressed-down 90s shirt and slacks from Country Road, and her in a loose blouse and a maroon skirt. He carried a duffel bag by his side (possibly from Country Road now that I think about it) and she carried a large belly in front of her. He said something and smiled at her, and she laughed nervously smiling back at him, and then at the ground. They were both clearly excited and it shone out of them like spikey sunlight. In the second or so that I saw them for, I realised of course that she was going into the hospital to have the baby and that this was them walking towards the hospital. More than that though, they were walking towards the event and everything it meant to them. They were walking toward a new child whom they knew intrinsically they were going to love intensely.

I don't know whether this was their first child, but something in the way they moved and acted (for the 3 seconds I saw them - its a 50km zone afterall) said they were shit-scared and making it up as they went along and that suggested to me that this was the first.

I felt incredibly lucky to witness something like that. It was perhaps one of those intimate moments that you don't even really consciously realise is intimate until long after the event when you review the more process-oriented elements of your memories, and realise that cumulatively they ere always the times that were pure and mattered. Needless to say, I knew what it was and I thought it was beautiful.

Last night, following this day, I had a dream that an ex-girlfriend from years ago had invited me to a cheap motel and broke the news that she was pregnant with my child. I did not react well. That is to say - I destroyed the earth and everyone in it by pressing a button and found myself explaining to Dwight Schrute why I'd done it. Oops.

Guess its not time for fatherhood then...