The Same Dream Since I Was Six, And Then My Daughter Drew It

I have had the same dream since I was six. Not often — maybe three times a year, sometimes a gap of two years, and then twice in a week.

It is never a nightmare in the normal sense. Nothing chases me. Nothing hurts. It is a low ceiling, close enough to touch, the colour of skimmed milk. A smell like holding coins in a hot hand. And the flat certainty that a decision is being made about me by people who are not unkind, and who are not going to consult me, the way adults decide things over a child's head at a hospital.

I never see anyone. I am always aware of them being to my left, out of the field of view, and I am always aware that turning my head is not something I am able to do, and — this is what I have never managed to explain to a therapist without her writing something down — it does not feel like paralysis. It feels like manners. Like turning my head would be rude, and I have understood that, and I have agreed.

I told my wife about it years ago. It became a joke, in the way that things become jokes in a marriage. The Coin Dream.