Dream time

When I think of my favorite bedtime story, it is not one story I think of, but I am transported back in time to being 4 or 5 years old. My mom has dropped me off at her parents’ place on the countryside, my grandma is about to prepare my favorite dinner; Homemade French Fries, and she could really use my ’help’ to set the table. My Grandfather arrives home from his job perfectly timed with dinner being served. I always loved my grandparents, already when I was young they were such unique characters to me. My grandfather never told me to not do anything, he left that responsibility to my grandmother. He would warn me not to put my hands on the stove and explain with a small amount of words why it could end badly to run with scissors but more than anything, he‘d play tricks on me, pull jokes, prank me. It was like a small theater play, and my grandmother would hold my hand as we adventured all together. In summer, after dinner, we’d sit in the garden as quietly as we could, on chairs right next to the table where my grandmother would feed the birds. My grandfather would drink up to three dark beers, and I believed him when he told me butterflies liked beer. As we sat there in silence, watching the spectacular amount of birds my grandmother was feeding, peacock butterflies would come together on my grandfather‘s white shirt, sipping from his beer, Showing 4 eyes each time they open their wings.

My grandparents' home was near a place where hot air balloons would take flight and land. Often in the weekends as we were watching the birds, butterflies, and the sunset-colored sky, those balloons would fly low over the fields around the house. So close, the people in the baskets could have a chat with us. About what they saw from up there, complimenting my grandmother on the beautiful flowering garden and wishing us a lovely night. As they would float away, they’d pull a blanket of dark starry night over us.

By the time my grandmother got me in my pyjamas, my grandfather would have lit candles in the house and in the garden, creating a world of magic to me. We‘d take a last walk to the outhouse and wish sweet dreams to anything we wanted to. My grandmother would remind me of some tree or flower, or one of the little wooden sculptures that scared me. My grandfather would close the window shutters and eventually we‘d say goodnight to Ursa Minor, which we called ‘the little bear’

Being with my grandparents was like being in a fairy tale on it’s own. My grandmother would take me to their bed, which was the softest bed I knew. Their pillows and blanket filled with feathers, it felt like laying in what imagined clouds were like. The bedroom was just big enough to fit the bed and the walls were covered with paintings from my great-grandfather. The paintings that were hanging there often set the scene for the bedtime stories my grandmother used to tell me. She’d point at one of the paintings and say “once there was a little boy, ... he lived over there, far, far in the forest, ..”, she’d help me come up with a storyline or she’d help me tell a story about what was happening on the paintings. The same paintings, endless different stories. She would come up with imaginary challenges and I would make up solutions. My grandmother would always come up to my amusement with different surprising twists. Sometimes the endings of her stories looked very similar, but I remained amazed by the idea that she could remember all those stories without a book. Once she told me a story about brave little sister before my little sister was born. It made me wish I had a little sister of my own, which happened. I assume now she knew my mom was going to tell me some days later. Most of her stories were not about fighting off a villain or an evil character but about visiting friends, having big parties with everybody there, lots of delicious food, and good news of more friends arriving or babies being born. Sometimes she’d tell stories about herself as a child. She would explain how a bomb sounded as it flew over their homes during the Second World War, and all the good places to hide. Or how many potatoes you needed in order to exchange them for a piece of chicken. But if there was an enemy, it was the big bad wolf, he was always hungry and would eat many characters of the story. Eventually the hero, usually the grandmother or boy in the story, would stop him, cut him open and free the eaten characters. They always turned out to be just fine. Everyone would collect rocks or buckets of water from the well and place them in the wolf’s stomach, sew him back up and he would turn out to be fine too. ‘With no more appetite, all forgiven, he’d stick around for good company and join the other characters in a big feast’. When my grandmother asked me to finish the story, that was the basic ending I felt we had agreed on.

The door of the bedroom had a glass window. As we’d lay in bed and look at the paintings whilst my grandmother told me stories, my grandfather would start to play a puppet theater behind the window in the door. Little sculptures and dried flowers, postcards, and candles would float by and perform the strangest dances. I would start to dream.

In the morning I would wake up in a nest of pillows and blankets on the sofa, to the sounds of a fire being lit in the fireplace. My grandmother would tell me to knock on the window. The window shutter would open and my grandfather would be there smiling at me holding some bread. Pointing at the deer approaching the house, he‘d tell me to quickly come out. The magic never ended with my grandparents.

Realizing later in life, as I learned how to read, that I didn’t know a single traditional bedtime story, it took me some time to get my own bedtime stories cleared out. I am still inspired by my grandparents and still love to come up with stories together with others when I get the chance. Let others come up with stories of their own. Listen to each other and imagine together. I think when I was a child it was not only the story that mattered, but also the way it was told. And in the end, what I remember most is who was telling me the story.