In my dreams people around me are following advice I know to be faulty, and I scramble to contradict the bad information with something helpful.

In the same dream my four year old creates a power struggle that ends in my missing Thanksgiving dinner with my best friend. In the car, I am crying to my husband that I wanted to stay and he is reminding me that I am the one who decided to leave.

I wake up sweaty and upset and full of longing for the okra and mashed potatoes that I walked away from just seconds ago.

The first thought in my head, more eloquent in those first few seconds of wakefulness than now after my inline editing, is “the lesson is not to be better prepared. The lesson is to trust people to prepare themselves”