On a cold snowy Sunday morning, a mother got out of bed and was about to go brush her teeth when she heard the sleepy crackled voice of her young boy saying, “No Mommy.  Come snuggle with me.”   Even though her teeth were screaming to be brushed, Superman himself couldn’t have walked away from the sweet boy and the warm bed.

So in she climbed and snuggled close. 

“Mom, I had some really weird dreams last night.”  The boy said with a far off look.

“Ooh I did too!  You tell me yours first!”

And off the boy went, describing with much seriousness and attention to detail, every aspect of his dream. 

The mother realized that normally there is nothing more boring on this earth to her than listening to another’s dream.  Some one else’s scatological thoughts in the unconscious mind no less, are sure to be painfully dull.

But on this morning, at this time, there was nothing else the mother wanted to do than to hear what happened next in this boy’s caveman dream.

At the end of his monologue, he looked at his mom and said, “OK now what were your dreams about?”  And not only did he hang on to every word of the mother’s nonsensical dream, he even asked follow up questions. 

As the boy and the mother were finally up and brushing their teeth, the mother reflected what a sweet moment that was.  It doesn’t always have to be the big grandiose things. 

The morale of this story is that right now, while we are in the throws of the holiday season, stop and listen to your loved ones.  Go back to bed and just listen. 

I guarantee they will remember that way more than how clean the kitchen floor is, how even the lights on the tree are or how you stayed up until midnight making twelve different types of Christmas cookies.