By Jayashree Sitaraman
She woke up to a perfect day. As soon as she woke up, she felt refreshed since she had slept straight for 7 hours without being interrupted by bouts of acidic burps or bursts of muscle spasms or plain boring insomnia or some other nuisances that are all too common once you hit the magic number of 40. She looked out the window to see the first rays of sun hitting the trees and the birds chirping merrily. She did a little dance and was about to break into a song when she realized that she had not brushed yet. After her morning routine, which surprisingly involved no wardrobe malfunction or what-I-should wear dilemma, she threaded her way to her little one’s bedroom. In spite of the wonderful morning she had had so far, she was filled with panic as she approached the door. She was worried how to cajole her sleepy son to part with his bed, which he would cling on to like the lifesaving log on a stormy sea, in the hope of snatching some more zzzz’s, before being dragged to the bathroom. Surprise—he was up already and sitting on the bed with a smile on his face. Well, it turned out that he had a dream where he was in a house made of cookies and he was eating a cookie from the cookie wall of a cookie house. If only he would dream the same dream every day before waking up! On her way back, she checked in the little one’s bathroom, also shared by her teenage son and you guessed it-surprise again-the towels were neatly hung and and a new tissue roll was back in its place and the bathroom looked like bathroom and not like a war zone. She couldn’t believe her luck and it was like today was a day of miracles.
On her way to the car, she was greeted by the usually grumpy neighbor who not only greeted her but also stopped to ask about her wonderful garden. Luckily, she had a few minutes to spare thanks to her son’s cookie dream. Once she and her little one were in the car and hit the road, she realized that the lights were green, and no one was cutting her in the traffic. She thought it was like the people were turning into collective sainthood. Since the probability of that happening was low, she thought maybe she was becoming a saint and these were the miracles that heralded her sainthood.
It was a crazy weird day—not the usual pulling hair out/screaming on top of her lungs kind but the reverse. She even got some compliments about her looks which made her make a mental note to check in the mirror later to see if there was a halo around her head or some kind of radiant light emitting out of her body. For, she couldn’t understand why things were going smoothly or why she heard back from her long lost friend, whom she had tried to contact through various means like email/phone/texting except sending message through pigeons. She zipped through her day at work and was eager to get home to see if her good luck continued. She couldn’t help wonder that even the pizza she had last night did not upset her stomach or the evening sunshine didn’t make her head throb with a migraine. This definitely was one of the best days ever in her life.
When she came home, it was eerily quiet and she couldn’t hear any arguments between her husband and teenage son or bickerings and name callings between the two boys. They were either at work or lost in any of the electronic gadgets that seem to be ubiquitous. She made dinner and was pleasantly surprised to see her older boy take out the trash can after being reminded only about three times instead of the 30 times she had to tell him usually. She felt like she had more time since she didn’t waste time looking for the little one’s favorite blue pencil in all the nooks and crannies or trying to convince him that homework done with any other pencil is still homework. Or trying to act as the peacekeeping force between the two boys who were arguing about which one of them was meaner. It was like they had made thorough research of each other’s character with all the statistics, including standard error of the times the other one had been mean. After dinner, she checked some emails and was about to say goodnight to the kids when the alarm went off. She was confused why anyone would set the alarm at night when she realized that it was morning and she had been dreaming all this time. It was then it struck her that she was thinking about the disastrous day she had when she went to bed last night-the problems at work, with the kids, her health, traffic and all the other things that can go wrong in one’s life. It was as if her subconscious mind had choreographed a sequence of all the nice things she wished for, in her dream. She woke up with a sigh, happy nevertheless that she had a perfect day at least in her dream.
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Jayashree Sitaraman is a scientist and a passionate writer. She enjoys writing about nature, travel and life in general. Her work has appeared in the anthology Poet In Verse, (available on amazon) The Voices Project, The Voice of Eve, The Beacon newspaper (print and online) and her poem has won second prize in the DearReader contest 2025.