Revelations

When I was a child I had a recurring nightmare. I started when I was 3 or 4 and I still had it on occasion when I was in college. The dream goes like this: I am at home, happily playing with my siblings or friends. Suddenly I look up and see a disembodied hand in a white glove. Now this hand is not bloody or gross in any way. It is just a hand, sans body, that happens to be wearing a white glove. The fingers of the hand are opening and closing and as the hand slowly gets closer and closer to me, I know without a doubt that it is “Coming to get me.” Which, of course, it does. Then everything goes black and when the lights come back up, the whole thing starts over again in a different room of the house. In the light of day, this dream is (and was) not scary in any way. However, at night, alone in the dark, it scared the pants off me.

Several weeks ago at Sunday dinner, I happened to mention this dream to my sisters and my mom. Patti paused for a minute and then reminded me of a game our dad used to play. We were to hold very still and he would open and close the fingers of one hand, bringing it nearer and nearer to us, all the while saying, “I’m going to get you,” over and over again. When his hand got to us, he would tickle us crazy. This game was very fun. I never once thought of it as something to be afraid of. Until Patti mentioned it in relation to my nightmare of choice. Then my mom reminded me that when my dad was in the Navy, which just happened to be during the time when this game was the most fun, he wore white gloves with his dress uniform. As these facts settled themselves in my brain, I could not restrain my instinctive response: “It’s Dad’s fault!!”