Last night, I Stole A Baby

I fell asleep with tears in my eyes. I realized it had been a couple of weeks since my ex had written me an email regarding our children. His last words were harsh, yet made me laugh, because he was saddened that I had no told him his daughter’s missed him. Since then I haven’t heard from him. His phone has been disconnected for quite some time, or he changed his number so we could no longer contact my son. I haven’t heard my son’s voice since New Year’s Eve. As that realization struck me like a ton of bricks, I had tears well up in my eyes.

Last night, I had an incredibly realistic (yet unrealistic) dream about stealing a baby. I was in New York, on some kind of travel, vacation, business or other and I was roaming the streets. I was surrounded by a lot of Brownstone buildings, so it could have Queens or Brooklyn (from what I could tell*).

*[As I have been up for a few hours now, all the details are becoming fuzzy, so I will try to remember as much as I can.]

I was roaming the streets, admiring the view. Tall, brownstones looming over me, hiding the sun. It was daytime, from what I can remember, and it was a beautiful day. I believe I might have ended up in Chinatown, or some part of the city that had a lot of those little street vendor shops that sells all kinds of bootleg Hello Kitty™ and $1 slippers and bootleg Nike™ shirts. As I’m looking around, I pick up a set of stickers. (Why do I remember that?) As I’m browsing all the stickers, thinking about the girls, I see someone watching me out of the corner of my eye.

Apparently, time has passed since I had last seen my ex and I had been happily living my life, unafraid of his wrath of my happiness. So, when I say him there, watching me, his face pale (which is hard for him since he’s fairly dark skinned) as though he has seen a ghost, I kept browsing, smiling. He walked up to me, baby in a stroller. The stroller, well obviously, has a tiny little baby – a girl – and my heart seems to stop. We exchange a few hello’s and “how ya doin’”s and I instinctively ask if I may hold the baby. He’s hesitant and let’s me hold the baby and for some reason I take off running with this tiny beautiful bundle of joy.

Eventually after hiding in a bodega, running through a few stores, I stop, look at this baby, and realize what I’m doing is wrong. I find him, give him back the baby, and walk away.

I don’t know what possessed me to have a dream of stealing a baby, but it must have been tied into my deeply, hidden resentment of my son still being so far away with his dad. Who knows. I guess I am also having baby blues. Whatever it is, last night I stole a baby. I don’t know why I was so desperate to have this baby, but I was, and thankfully it was just a dream.

I’m not going to delve too deep into my subconscious in order to figure what it all means,  I’m just going to be grateful for the fact it wasn’t real and I wasn’t on an Amber Alert for kidnapping. That would have been a worse real-life nightmare.

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