Caleb's Dreams

Caleb has always been a bit of an old soul. He takes everything in, processes it silently, and comes up with some of the deepest thoughts. The other day he told me that he wishes he could go straight to heaven right now instead of living a long time here. Another time, he told me that when he is quiet, he is thinking about "all the things that happened all of the other days before," which I took to mean he plays conversations and experiences over again in his head (like I do).

He has also remembered and talked about his dreams since he was able to talk. He had a dream about flying over a year ago, and he can still recount it to the smallest detail whenever it comes up. He tells me about a new dream about once a week. Considering his age, one might think that he is just making up stories and not recounting an actual dream, but I'm convinced they are memories and not stories. One reason for that is that he tells about the dream using the same sentences in the same order, no matter how long it has been since he woke up. He also includes descriptions/words that are generally only a part of his receptive vocabulary. A couple of days ago, he told me about this dream, and then repeated it to his dad a couple of days later:

[paraphrased] "I dreamed that Ethan dropped his star down where a scary bad guy lived, and we had to go down and get it. The scary bad guy looked like Venom from my superhero [coloring] book. He was very, very strong. Not stronger than Daddy, but Daddy wasn't there, so we had to go by ourselves and get Ethan's star back. I wasn't strong enough to fight him, so I sang a lullaby song and that made him go to sleep. There were two ways to go, one up and one down, and I had to decide which way to go. I 'cided to go up cause I saw Ethan's star the up way. After I got Ethan's star, I 'cided to go down, too, to see what was down there. The scary bad guy didn't wake up."

When I ask him what happened next, he always says "nothing," which further convinces me he is not making up a story, in which case it would be easy for him to fill in more imaginary details. Here is another dream that I thought was cute.

"I dreamed I was at the beach at nighttime with a silly woman. She was being very silly like she was in the circus. But then she disappeared. I looked around and nobody was there. I was a little scared and I wanted to go back to my home, so I closed my eyes and I disappeared back to my home."

I remember having (and remembering) very vivid dreams from a young age, so he comes by this naturally. But I do hope that he is not destined to go through life with the almost incessant thinking and reflecting that has always plagued me :)