Brittany Ackerman
Big Splashes, So Big
I dream that beetles have infested our home. The meaning of beetles in dreams varies, but some say that dreams about insects in general can indicate a need to be free from anxiety or a lack of control in a person’s life. If a beetle appears in your dreams, it could be a sign that a major change is about to bring positive transformation into your life. In the dream, I take our Dyson vacuum and suck up the beetles one by one. There are hundreds. Each one disappears into the belly of the vacuum. The sound they make, their clicking and tapping, is unbearable.
On the highway, I drive next to a truck full of cows. My daughter knows what sound a cow makes. She keeps her mouth closed for the moo, a more accurate noise.
My husband texts me a picture of an accident report from our daughter’s school. Our daughter was bitten by another kid. She was given TLC and water. The bite did not break the skin, but it will leave a bruise. Something inside me drops like a broken elevator, something like getting stuck between floors. And this has happened to me, once, in France, in a lift, and the doors had to be pried open so everyone aboard could be pulled through. This is what it’s like with your child, this feeling of having to pry something open so you can exist.
The bite mark on my daughter’s arm looks like a cartoon. It looks like something that would happen on a Nickelodeon TV show. The bite looks fake, but it’s real.
When I get my hair colored, the hairdresser asks if I had any postpartum hair loss. No, I say. “Oh, but it looks like you’ve got some here,” she says and for the first time I see a halo of wispy hairs at the crown of my head. “That’s the hair trying to grow back,” she tells me.
Time stops when my daughter is in the bath. She picks up foam letters from the water and places them on the glass, on the tile. The ordering of letters is not intended to spell out words, but to get her used to their shape, their sound, the way they look. When all the letters are up, she takes them down one by one. What if I only typed things just to erase them later? No, back to the bath, my daughter is splashing in the water and looking at me for approval. Big splashes. So big. I don’t want bath time to end. I’m sure we share this sentiment.
I get Botox. I get a gel manicure and a regular pedicure. I get my hair done. I buy new clothes for work. I buy new shoes from Nordstrom Rack. I make a pile of my old clothes and try to sell them to a consignment store. I donate the clothes they don’t take. I rotate out my daughter’s toys so things she hasn’t played with in a while seem like new. I trim her nails while she drinks her milk. Hup! she says, and it means Help!
I have the dream again where I am boarding a flight unsure of its destination. All I know is that the aircraft is made for longer than usual travel. It has a ballroom and a dining hall and a viewing area so you can look out the window from time to time. Someone asks me if I’m excited to reach my destination. But I don’t know where we’re going, I say and the person laughs. I notice that the aircraft isn’t moving yet, so I make my way to the exit. I want to get off the plane, I say, but then we suddenly begin moving. The plane angles itself toward the sky and passengers scramble to their seats. I press my face against a window and feel the cool on my cheek. All I see is water, pools of sapphire glistening as we hurtle upward with great speed.
Brittany Ackerman Ackerman is a writer from Riverdale, New York. She is a three-time Pushcart Prize Nominee and her work has been featured in The Sun, MUTHA, Jewish Book Council, Lit Hub, The Los Angeles Review, No Tokens, Joyland, and more. Her first collection of essays, The Perpetual Motion Machine, was published with Red Hen Press in 2018, and her debut novel, The Brittanys, is out now with Vintage. Her Substack is called taking the stairs.
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