Mama Always ~ L.A. Brown, Author

In January, it will be thirty years since my life changed. No, there was no traffic accident that marred me for life; no personal disaster such as a crippling disease; no death of a parent or loved one that so impacted me; no crime committed against me. No, a baby was born. Not your ordinary baby, but one who had gained my love and attention during the forty weeks while she was formed. During that forty weeks, I was able, through the miracle of technology, to hear her heartbeat and see her suck her thumb. My husband and I witnessed a miracle that we never thought would happen. On January 15, 1983, at 11:45 p.m., Andrea Michelle Lane was born. What we thought was a miracle quickly turned into the biggest challenge of my life and forever altered any dreams that I had for her. She was diagnosed with Down Syndrome, and sixteen hours later, the genetic markers were identified and we were hit with the confirmation. The pediatrician who was on duty came in and calmly and clinically proclaimed...

OK, shameless snagging of a movie film title, but it was pretty appropriate for the dream that I had while I slept last night. For the most part, when I dream I rarely remember the details. On the rare occasion that I do remember them, they seldom make sense. This one was so vivid, so intense that I couldn't help but remember it, even six hours later. In the movie that I reference above, Robin Williams experiences Heaven itself after he is killed in an automobile crash. The colors and experiences are beyond what his mortal mind can completely comprehend. In my dream, the colors were fairly normal, but what I saw was something that was beyond my imagination and was so compelling that I think it will be a while if ever that I forget what I saw. In my dream, and this part is a bit sketchy, but I think that I was in a store or a restaurant. Wherever it was there was quite a number of people there. I was with a friend, it is not clear who it was...as I am recounting, there are a f...

Seriously.  I hate spiders. Not as much as some people I know (you know who you are...), but I am not a fan. When there's just a little brown house spider around, I call Chris to come and smash it. When Draco was still alive, he wouldn't allow anyone to kill bugs...I guess he was kind of a nature boy that way. He could kill all the bugs he wanted to, but let us take a paper, shoe or magazine to one, or if the cats had found one and was playing with it before dismembering it, he would fuss and go after whoever was after the bug. Now that he's not around, its kind of quiet except for the occasional  scream from me or the "ewww" from Andrea. Anyway, I bring this up for a reason. Now, mind you, I haven't seen one of these buggers here and I hope I never do, but I had a dream...not a nightmare, a dream (how can it not  be a nightmare, right?) about a banana spider. For those of you who have no idea what the heck a banana spider looks like, well, here it is: ...