Sleeping Diary

I always carried my diary beside my bed, not for the usual reason of writing down incidents of the day, but for something far more frivolous. I entitled it "Sleeping Diary." It all started on one lazy Sunday afternoon when my mom began recounting stories of her dreams during childhood, funny sleep habits, and those half-awake moments she forgot by morning. She suggested I write down whatever I could remember the next morning as about my own dreams or sleep adventures, and thus my little project was born.

I'd keep trying to pay attention in that fleeting moment as I was going to sleep. You know: that space of being nearly asleep but your thoughts are slowly turning into dreams, though you are still conscious. I'd commit the weird things my brain would produce in this twilight state to memory, promising myself I'd write it all down the next day in my diary.

One of the earliest entries that I found really was when I dreamed I had a talking unicorn as a pet. But what was funny, because it came from a majestic or mystical, talking unicorn, he was complaining about the clouded traffic. I woke up laughing and would grab my diary and get to write down the details while they were still fresh. After a while, I realized that not only the stars of my sleeping diary were heroes there. Other things like waking up to be burrito-wrapped in my blankets or even waking up with only one sock were tossed into that notebook as well.

There were mornings when the diary was full of simple fragments, like the time I dreamt that I was flying over cotton candy clouds or when I used to wake up with that recurring dream of missing the school bus and realizing halfway into the ride that I was still wearing my pajamas. Other mornings, I recounted those moments of confusion, when I woke up certain it was that time of day to start the day, and discovered it was actually 3 a.m.

Over time, I can definitely remember patterns in my dream; about how those imaginative places were something like an amusement park located entirely out of ice cream or that cozy treehouse high above the city where the sun never seemed to set. Then, there were times when I met all the same characters time and again .

Perhaps the fondest memories of all were not the dreams themselves but the conversations that sprang from them. My mother loved it when I read her the funny snippets from my diary. She would, in turn, share her own odd dreams. It became our little morning tradition over breakfast to compare our subconscious journeys from the night before-we laughed at some of the absurdity, but others so real, you couldn't shake them out of your mind. Sometimes even my younger sister took part, offering her own strange dream visions of talking giraffes or falling down holes that just went on and on.

One entry in particular makes me smile even today. I had dreamed of an adventure in a magical library where every book contained a different dream. I could take a book, open it, and suddenly be flung into someone else's dream world for the night. The library itself was grand, had spiral staircases and massive towering bookshelves seeming to go on ad infinitum. I woke up from that dream, with such excitement and inspiration, that I spent the entire day drawing out what that library would look like if it were real.

As I grew older, it was a sleeping diary that gradually receded into the background, giving way to morning rushes and blurry dream images. But whenever I flip through those pages, I am transported back to those simpler times when the boundary between imagination and reality was thin, and even the smallest detail of a dream felt worth preserving.

It was a sleep diary and a gathering of fleeting moments—including half-dreaming hazy mornings and sleep thoughts. This too had a chapter where life went about when wonder was just close enough to shut my eyes and imagine; perhaps I no longer keep it, but the memories cling to me like the dreams that I loved every morning, fading softly but never entirely forgotten.