When I was little, I had nightmares of being sucked underwater. I can still remember the feeling of the water dragging me down and the way the water pressed into my chest, collapsing my lungs and forcing air out of my mouth. I’d wake up in a panic, shaking and clawing at the mass of blankets and pillows on top of me, tangled in the blankets like some hapless fish stuck in a fishing net, ropes cutting into its gleaming skin. I’d scream and sob, the ocean water choking me and the pressure increasing until I c
My mother was the one who came to my rescue, soothing me by stroking my hair and meticulously unraveling me from the swaddle of blankets I’d managed to wrap myself in. By the faint, yellow glow of my seashell nightlight, she’d sing to me softly as I lay on top, never underneath, the covers, head slowly sinking back into the pillows.
I’ve long forgotten the words to the lullabies she would sing, but the sound of her voice and the swaying calmness of the melody still haunts my good dreams. It doesn’t much matter now anyways, because I never knew the words of the lullaby she sang to me. Or at least, I never understood them. It was a relic from her past, something my grandmother must have sung to her back when she lived across the ocean, in a foreign country that I’ll never know as well as she once did. Her lullaby was one of the only memo