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This appears in May 2008 v184 issue (saddle-stitched) of cc&d magazine. Click the issue number or the cover to see that issue online.						This writing also appears in the published 100 page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/book “This was the Time” cc&d v184 May 2008, reprinted in 2019! (the 2019 reprinting of the May 2008, v184 issue, that also contains 3 bonus 2008 live poetry chapbooks!) Order this as a 6"x9" paperback book:

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This writing appears in the published 100 page perfect-bound ISSN#/ISBN# issue/book “This was the Time” cc&d v184 May 2008, reprinted in 2019! (the 2019 reprinting of the May 2008, v184 issue, also containing 3 bonus 2008 live poetry chapbooks!) Order this as a 6"x9" paperback book:

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Bafflement

Pat Dixon

    “I had one hell of a frustrating dream this morning, Margie. It really pisses me off.”
    Marjorie Hamilton glanced up from her computer, where she was processing a batch of interlibrary loan requests.
    “Why’s that, Dr. S.?” she said with a quiet smile.
    “Because I don’t see any ways I can use it, of course,” said Kate Shaughnessy, frowning and shrugging in a theatrical way. “My dreams ought to be of use to me. Usually they are. Well, occasionally they are.”
    “Be with you in a sec,” said Marjorie. “Just give me—a moment—more. There. So tell me about it. I can give you six minutes—then I’ll have to take another work break. First, what was your dream?”
    “Well, you know I was married for two years, right? Anyways, I’m sure I never told you I had a little child—a boy—Kevin—who was premature and only lived for five and a half hours. I actually held him almost the whole while, knowing that he was dying, but that’s not the point. He was my only child—and this morning I had a dream that I had a very tiny baby girl—no name for her in the dream—just a tiny light-haired girl that was lying on the center of a twin bed looking up at me. How ‘bout that?”
    “Maybe it was a sort of wish type of dream,” said Marjorie.
    “No—I’m pretty sure it wasn’t. I came into the room, anxious that I’d left her—that I’d forgotten about her and was doing other things—that I’d gotten sidetracked with personal stuff of my own—and I realized that she could fall off the bed onto the floor while I was away and, maybe, break her neck or—crack her skull and—become damaged—crippled or—not right in the head, you know? By the way, it was my own bedroom she was in, but not on my bed. My bed’s a so-called full-size or double, while this was clearly just a twin bed—and that’s important, too.”
    Kate paused, frowned again, and shook her head twice. Marjorie raised both her eyebrows encouragingly.
    “Yes?”
    “She was the size of a newborn, lying there on her back, wearing a little diaper. Then she began to shrink—and darken—and roll over on her stomach—and I just stood there at the foot of the bed and watched it happen. She shrank and shrank and shrank—right down to about half an inch—like a dark little cricket—and no longer had a diaper—at least that I noticed. If she had one, it was brownish-black, like her teeny body, so it blended in. Then she began to crawl and make little hops towards the side edge of the bed—and I just stood there and watched and didn’t try to stop her.”
    “Pretty damn’ creepy!” said Marjorie with a rapid shrug,.
    “Yup. And then my little daughter hopped off the bed onto my rug, scuttled to the baseboard near my closet—and crawled out of sight—and I woke up.”
    “Hmm. Were you reading Kafka recently—or teaching one of his stories? I recall one where I guy woke up as a cockroach or something.”
    “No, it wasn’t like that. I’ve taught that story a dozen times and have it coming up again next term—but I’ve figured out what this means. At least I’m pretty sure I have. You know what’s my chief problem these days?”
    “Getting tenure?”
    “Well, probably—as my long-term goal here at Witherspoon. No, I mean my immediate problem—day-to-day, week-to-week.”
    “Your mom? Your mom’s care—as she goes, well, battier?”
    “Yup. It’s like role reversal. I’m the adult in charge now, and she’s getting more and more childish every time I see her. She’s been in the hospital in Hartford for over four weeks, and I’ve started scouting rest homes for her. I’m planning on moving her—again—fourth time in seven years. Each time I’ve moved her, she hates the place for half a year or so, which upsets me, too. Whatever is left of her brain will blame me for whatever she’s unhappy with—or so I feel. She has lost a lot more marbles in just the past month, so she might notice the change less.”
    Marjorie nodded sympathetically. She had been through something similar.
    “My mom—who has a twin bed—and wears diapers—is like a little baby girl now and seems to be shrinking down into something less than human—something I try to—to, well, distance myself from, physically—and emotionally. Anyways, that’s how I interpreted my own dream while I was lying awake five minutes before getting up: I was feeling guilty about pulling away and somehow neglecting my mom—who was going to vanish after she shrank more and more and more.”
    “I guess that makes sense—though you know you are one weird ‘mother,’ Kate.”
    “Ha—yes, I am, aren’t I? But the dream itself didn’t really trouble me, Margie. It was mainly that I couldn’t think of any ways to use it—remember?”
    “What do you mean ‘use’?”
    “Well, I’m always on the lookout for ways to turn stuff into stories—lemons into lemonade, or whatever. You’ve been to a couple of my little fiction readings upstairs here, right?”
    “Yuh. More than a couple. And?”
    “Parts of some of my stories, as I tell audiences, have come from some of my own dreams—altered, turned inside-out, sex-changed, whatever. And many of my recent stories have to do with my so-called ‘elder care’ experiences. Anyways, I can’t figure any ways—of turning this perfectly good, reasonable, vivid dream into a short story. I’ve got a new alter-ego character—Charlie Bennett—who is caring for his elderly mom in several of my latest stories, but he is not bright enough to have such a dream—and understand it. I can’t think of any way he could come up with the correct interpretation for such a dream—and besides, he hasn’t had any children, and for this dream he should’ve had at least one son.”
    “Hmm. Maybe you should invent a female alter ego that is smart enough.”
    “I’ve got one for non-elder-care stories—Pat Dixon. She’s smart enough, but I’d have to reinvent a lot of her life. She doesn’t have any children—at least none I know of yet—and I don’t know, yet, what her situation is with any parents she might have.”
    “You’ll think of something. Maybe you just need a whole new alter-ego character.”

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