On Childhood Fears and the Bravery of Hope

By Annie Mark-Westfall — LETTERS FROM BERLIN

My four-year-old has been having bad dreams lately. He wakes up in the middle of the night screaming.

“The planet is dying! I don’t want the planet to die!”

I climb into his bed and hold him. It has become a recurring dream. Very calmly and sleepily, I say of course the planet isn’t dying, everything is fine, go back to sleep. He curls against me, shoves his finger into his mouth, and sleeps heartbreakingly deep.

Meanwhile, I lay wide awake next to him, trying to utilize lessons from my yoga practice. Inhale, exhale. Breathe in his innocence, breathe out my worries. My own silent tears now spill into his impossibly blond hair, as I lay frozen in panic. I don’t want the planet to die either, little dude.

I think about how, when I was four (or in my memories of being four), there was a giant hole in the ozone layer and a terrifying disease called AIDS was spreading, but we did not know how or why. It felt like the sky was falling.

Every generation forever has felt this way, I know. But it is in my generation that koalas might go extinct; and apparently the greatness of koalas and Dolly Parton are two of the only things left that people can agree on.