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I had a dramatic dream last week, a dream about a man in a white suit twisting my damaged left arm, the one I'm still carrying in a sling after breaking the shoulder, and in the dream he was causing excruciating pain as I cried out in agony and he sneered at me, "How's that? Does that hurt? Do you want more?" and in the background I heard cruel childish laughter, taunting, insulting, calling me a Baby, urging the tormentor on.
It was a primal dream about ordinary cruelty. I was tormented by other children, so were you. It's part of childhood. And then my daughter Maia came into the dream and he vanished. I'd been looking at pictures of her that day on my laptop, joyful pictures, grinning, eyes alight, with her beloved aunts and nannies, Jenny her mom, her grandmothers, me.
She didn't speak in the dream, she simply made everything peaceful.
She was born in a New York hospital a few days after Christmas, 1997, eyes open wide, taking it all in. We named her Maia after Jenny's Swedish grandma and Grace after my mother. We brought the little girl home to Minnesota to meet her relatives. My mother and father and elderly relations came one afternoon to view her, an infant visitation, and the sleeping child was passed from one elder to another, Ina and Louie, Joan, Elsie and Don, Jean, each holding her in their arms, giving their blessing.
I was 55 and she was the last grandchild, a last attempt to breed some frivolity and high-spiritedness into our somber Anglo line, and we succeeded. She didn't get that grin from the Keillor genes, I know that. She is a socialite, a hugger and comedian, who craves beautiful experiences, swimming, a party, lunch in a café with tablecloths and oddball waiters, the Radio City Christmas show with the chorus line doing synchronized high kicks when one Rockette kicked off a shoe but kept dancing though off-kilter. Priceless.
For her tonsillectomy I was the one who helped the anesthesiologist hold the mask to her face and put her out. And an hour later, coming out of OR, she spotted me and stuck out her tongue. But she hugged me later.
She'd been diagnosed with apraxia, slow speech development, and then was diagnosed with Angelman syndrome, a neurogenetic disorder that can be catastrophic — a cruel neurologist tested her briefly and said, "She'll never talk" — but thanks to her mother's determination and dozens of dedicated therapists and the grace of G od she did.
The little girl loved school, loved the company of other children, and then gradually she didn't anymore, and it was clear that she was being picked on, and she didn't have the language skills to defend herself. It was unbearable. So when she was twelve, we did the hardest thing we'd ever done and took her to a special-needs boarding school in upstate New York and left her there, weeping, in the arms of a teacher, and drove away, got out of sight and fell apart. We told each other we were doing the right thing. The child didn't change her clothes for four days because those were the clothes her mother had last hugged her in.
Over time she thrived. There was a girl from Greece, Marisa, who became a big sister to her, and the sun shone again. And there were teachers who had a calling to work with these kids. At graduation, the bagpiper played and the class flung their mortarboards in the air, my daughter's flying high with the others.
And today she is one of the happiest friends I have, living her own life, ever capable of delight. A genetic glitch does not imply a lack of personality, far from it. She rode the River Run ride at the State Fair with me, which we called the Pee Ride, and laughed hysterically to see water washing into my lap. I have the video on my cellphone. It makes me happy.
As a little girl, she visited my dad at home as he lay dying and she stood by his bed. He was glad to see her. He moved his right big toe slowly under the blanket and she snatched it and he moved it away. Then his left toe. Her delight delighted him and he laughed. The laughter of a dying man makes comedy a sacred art.
And that's what the dream was all about.
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality. His latest book is "Cheerfulness". Buy it at a 38% discount! by clicking here. Sales help fund JWR.