10−2 mentality

Last night I dreamt that my dad was getting me ready to go to school in the morning. Towards the end, he had a habit of waking at the crack of dawn - way earlier than he needed to - to spend some time with me just reading the bible and having breakfast before school. Now I realise it was his way of trying to hypnopompically pass on a few values and smuggle some good habits into a son that didn't seem to be growing into anything that remotely resembled him. I retaliated by complying with this regimen like a psych patient receiving legally mandated neuroleptics, hoping each day my sulking and languid disinterest would force him to realise the futility of his efforts, the idea being one day he'd throw his arms up in defeat, forever renounce his attempts to rehabilitate me and finally stop waking me up in the morning.

In my dream, we're in the old house again. I'm a lanky seventeen year old with no real world responsibility yet. As I rub the sleep from my eyes, I catch a peripheral vision glimpse of dad, staggering about bleary eyed at the threshold between my parents' bedroom and mine. He is standing still, facing away from me. It's as if he's trying to decide whether to go back to sleep or stay awake. I can sense that he's tired, that he'd clearly prefer to be comfortably asleep instead of awake at 6am, and that he isn't doing this for any reason other than because he loves me - and without thinking I place my hands against his back, and I hear myself say, in a voice too gentle to be my own, "It's okay, dad - I can do it myself. You go back to bed."

I guess some of it sunk in after all.

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old enough to know you're old enough to wake yourself up now