Are You Asleep?

Vacation ended this morning with a whimper, not a bang. The whimper came from the father, who at six o'clock in the morning pulled the covers over his head when his son appeared next to the bed whispering, "I had a bad dream."
His mother welcomed him under our covers as the whispering and mumbling continued. When could the television be turned on? How much longer until it would "really be morning?" I tried very hard to appear as unconscious as possible, so my muddled understanding of the situation could remain focused on the prime concern of going back to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream. This all could have been a dream. It fit well with the kind of dream I have at regular intervals when I am trying to cling to the broken remnants of dawn. The purple gorillas and melting doorways that would be helpful clues to what side of consciousness I was on are nowhere to be found. These are the matter of fact ramblings of my too-rational mind as I get out of bed and take a shower, have a bowl of granola and head back to the bedroom to get dressed before I realize I'm still lying down with my eyes closed.
Before Bruce Willis was a mega-star, he played David Addison in a nice piece of late eighties TV fluff called "Moonlighting." David Addison once made this very clever observation: "Vacation never ends - it just changes location." To this end, I expect that I will get a good night's sleep tonight, then the reality will come crashing in long before Monday morning when everything starts back again for real. The irony of this will come in the form of the prone body of my son, who will undoubtedly need a team of paramedics and the jaws of life to wake him up in time to get ready for school. Or maybe it was all just a bad dream.