How to Conquer a Nightmare

When I was very little, say 5 or 6, at the oldest, I had a recurring nightmare. In the dream, a sculpture which hung in my home, came to life as a monster, and tortured me. The sculpture, called "Falling Lady", by Don Snell, early sixties, was a life size human mass assembled in old painted rags, spooky mummy style, which looked to my eyes like a really horrific paper mâché piñata. The woman's body was grotesquely twisted and the spattered paint, though multicolored, looked like so much spattered blood. I had to constantly divert my eyes, and as a result, I don't even remember what the face looked like. It hung over a two story expanse in my parents office/studio space. If I visited my Mom in there I would cover my eyes except to look at her. Never would I enter that room at night and if the door was open and I had to walk past, I looked the other way and ran.

Just your average paper lantern, or is it?

My dream took several forms, usually some otherwise benign household fixture would suddenly turn into the horrible creature, often it was the huge paper globes which covered hanging light fixtures in our entry hall, my parents had several hanging throughout our house, big white cheap, paper lanterns which looked clean and contemporary but which I could only run past as a child for fear they would turn into the creature of my nightmare. So I avoided these lampshades also.

When the dream would begin I would feel the scratchy claw-like hand of the sculpture woman on my shoulder. Made of rags stiffened with paint and probably copious amounts of glue, the sculpture's surface was scratchy and creepy to touch. I had only touched it once, in waking hours, and I don't know how I dared. During my dream the monster's touch would send me into screams and fits of terror. My mom would run to my room and try to wake me but I could only feel the monster's touch--my own mother's touch mistaken for the monster's. It would take her some time to wake me and make me feel safe again. Sometimes, if I was lucky, I would spend the rest of the night in my parents bed because as soon as my bedroom light was turned out I would again feel the monster's touch and begin to scream.

It is hard to say how long this went on, weeks or months but it was during this period that my parents moved my sister and I into another bedroom, long planned to be our big girl room, vacating the room which would become our baby brother's room, but with just one hitch: the new bedroom was the room next door to my parents' studio. Now if a lampshade could turn into my monster, the wall which separated me from that monster could not be trusted to keep that monster at bay. The nightmares continued. But gradually, they developed and changed. In my very last monster dream I found myself walking two houses down to my best friend Rosie's house to play, only to discover that the garage door entry was all closed up, indicating that her family was away. I sat at the curb of her driveway, missing her, and there appeared the monster. I remember not screaming, not running, but gazing down at the marbled motor oil rainbow in the water of the gutter and saying, without looking up, that we should try to be friends. And it seems it was as simple as that. My nightmares ended. I'd like to think that I ended them with my own will. I suppose my parents thought I just grew out of them.
Fear, while you experience it, is a hard thing to get around, and simple, in hindsight, to dismiss.

My husband, Brian, had a recurring childhood dream also. In his, he is at a carnival or fair and after exiting a ride realizes that night has fallen and the carnival is deserted. He is alone and terrified.

How do these dreams stop? Is it simply that the child dreamer matures past the fear? Does the dreamer decide to banish the monster or just look at the monster in a new light? I'd like to think that the dreamer plays an active role. In my dream I think missing my friend helped me to see the monster as somebody less threatening. Who knows? But Brian's dream became a seed idea for a musical he wrote, Ivy and the Wicker Suitcase. 
And here is a song from the musical in which Ivy, our hero, puts a nightmare to bed.
Oh do listen in, and enjoy... 
Below is an illustrations I did to accompany it.

Ivy's Dream, from Ivy and the Wicker Suitcase