This Saturday morning I had a nightmare that my youngest daughter was washed away in a mudslide on a street in Italy (or maybe a little town in South Texas).  I ran allongside her as she was carried waist deep in the stream of mud.  I saw that she was approaching a gutter and there was no escaping.  Then I realized that she would emerge in a lake a few hundred feet away.  I let her go instead of diving in and I ran to the lake.  I couldn't find the emergent culvert.  My mother on another bank yelled out that it emerged below the surface.  I looked down into the water to see clouds of mud spread throughout the previously clear depths.  then someone shouted there's a head and I simultaneously saw her curly hair undulating beautifully as her body floating amongst the weeds just at the bottom.  She had on a baby nightgown and was clutching a little doll.  The mud clouds were engulfing her.  The situation seemed impossible as she had been under a minute or two and was far down at the bottom disappearing.  I dove in and just aimed just ahead of the spot I last saw her.  I swam deeper and deeper praying to maintain a straight course and to fend off feelings of grief and terror. I reached the bottom and miraculously felt her body in my hands. Swimming back to the top I worried whether it would be possible to resuscitate her as she probably had water in her lungs.

When we reached the surface I lifted her out and carried her to the bank.  She immediately started babbling about her brothers and sisters and some incident about an animal at the zoo on their recent trip.  I realize that she resumed the conversation that were having before she was swept away.  Thanks be to God, she had held her breath and stayed calm the entire time.

I immediately thought about my sister and my dad for some reason and I empathized more effectively for his grave fear right now that he is losing her to cancer.  Then I thought about my daughter and how I should hug her tightly and appreciate her.  I remembered that I yelled at her the day before and that I should not do that.