Dream

[ailbhe]

Last night I dreamt I was playing pool on a green table using oranges instead of balls, and one pocket kept popping the balls back out. I forced two or three into it and they came out and then a tiny black hand came out and waved. I realised there wasa child in there, trapped in the table, and we unscrewed the four huge phillips head screws holding the taqbletop on at the corners and I lifted out a skinny black boy dressed in faded shorts and shirt. He had one almost withered leg which had been broken but never set properly. Someone wanted to take him away from me to deal with in the proper way, because he shouldn't have been in the table and he was in trouble now, but I wouldn't let them. We raised him with Linnea and Emer and he grew up to be huge and muscular and a little fat, and his leg was fine, and at the end of the dream we were all in the swimming pool, my black foster-son an adult and my white daughters still 4 and 2, and he was delighted and strong adn still desperately sad and afraid because of being locked in the table.

I still felt guilty for shoving the oranges into the pool-table-pocket when I didn't know there was a person in there after I woke up.

But I was glad I'd been able to rescue him, in the dream, and that no-one had been able to take him away to a proper detainment centre.