Dreams and safety
White Nightmare
There was a house. I knew it was mine. There was a swing on the veranda, and I was swinging fast. The faster I went, the higher I rose. At the very top, to the right…
There was a house. I knew it was mine. There was a swing on the veranda, and I was swinging fast. The faster I went, the higher I rose. At the very top, the distant sea appeared to the right. You could not normally see it from the house. Only when the swing rose, in that brief moment, did the sea come into view.
It was intensely blue. A blue that stretched as far as I could see, as if it were endless.
Each time, I wanted to rise a little higher and hold that view a little longer. So I swung faster.
In front of me, a stream flowed into the sea. Everything around it was green. But when I lifted my head, I saw mountains: high, silent, stern mountains. There was something too much about that silence, as if something were hidden. Then everything changed at once. The blue withdrew; white descended. Cold struck my face. Winter had arrived.
The place that had been empty moments earlier suddenly filled with people. They stood in rows, bent over, silently gathering something. Baskets filled and hands worked, but there was no sound. This silence was not normal. Then a scream came. A single scream… followed by another…
Baskets fell and people began running. Shouts, footsteps, breaths… Something was coming down from the mountains. Bears. They were fast, very fast, running towards the people. My heart tightened. I jumped from the swing.
My daughter was running towards me. ‘Mum!’ I took her hand; it was icy cold. We ran to the door together and went inside. As I was about to close it, I saw a man running towards us, his eyes full of fear. I opened it again. ‘Quick!’ I said. He came in. ‘Go straight ahead, out through the back door!’ I directed him and closed the door again.
I was breathless, but it was not over. A child arrived. Small… but something was strange. I reached out. ‘Come,’ I said. The child did not come. Instead, they pulled me. I remained on the threshold. My foot slipped outside. The cold, the danger, was very close. I was no longer pulling the child in; the child was pulling me out. I looked into their eyes. There was no innocence there. And I understood: not everyone who asks for help wants to be saved. I pulled back my hand and shut the door.
Just then, something struck. A bear had hit the door. The house shook. My daughter was behind me, and I stood in front of the door. Then I ran to the window. Bears stood just outside the sliding glass, very close. They pushed their claws into the gap and began forcing it. They seemed to know how it opened. I pushed with all my strength from inside while they pressed from outside.
In that moment, I noticed how great a boundary existed between the inside of the house and the outside. Inside was our safe space. Outside was a place we could not control, where we did not know what we would face.
The door and window were no longer merely parts of the house. They were the boundary separating us from outside. For the first time, I felt its importance so strongly. Home is not a place where you are entirely removed from the outside world; it is where you can feel safe despite everything outside.