Every morning my great granddaughter, 4-year-old Ayla, comes into my bedroom to give me my morning hug. Every morning I ask her about her dreams. Most of the time she can't remember them, but when she does she always starts by telling me her dreams as if they are stories.
This morning she told me she had a really silly dream and she began, as she always does with, "Once upon a time":
"Once upon a time I dreamed of a giant heart coming out of a bottle (she held her thumb and finger in such a way as to indicate the bottle was really small). It (the heart) was really colorful."
I asked her what the bottle looked like.
"The bottle had black and white stripes."
When I asked her if the bottle was the size of the little plastic bottle filled with candy that her grandmother (my daughter) had given her yesterday, she said yes.
"Butterflies were flapping their wings around it."
The butterfly may have come about because at one point yesterday, my daughter showed Ayla a beautiful butterfly that was just outside our patio door.
Like every other day, Ayla also drew on my iPad, and I told her that her drawing was very colorful.
Ayla had incorporated several elements from the day before in this dream, all of which involved her grandma. I wanted to know if she thought the dream represented the love her grandmother had for her, because hearts represent love.
She shrugged her shoulders before she closed the door behind her and said, "Maybe."
