Gaining entry to the exclusive club with my new baby

I am walking down the street and pass a wedding venue where people are setting up for a very fancy party. My sister is there and comes out to talk to me. She’s in the bridal party and has been invited through a friend of a friend. It’s like she partially belongs in this fancy, wealthy, upper class world but not fully and she still remembers where she came from. I have a new baby that is swaddled and sleeping in my arms. My sister says she needs me to help her with her make up and that I can come inside to the room where people are getting ready. There is a woman (the host? Mother of the bride? Wedding planner?) who I have to check in with to gain entry. I tell her I’m not staying for the party I just need to come in for 5 minutes to help my sister get ready and then I’ll leave. The woman says that there’s no precedent for that and everyone still needs to check-in. She says she would love me to stay but I can tell she’s just being polite. We have a moment of tension and then I give in and agree to sign the check-in form. When I look at the form I see places for standard contact information like name and phone number but the next column says “mental health” and the next one “medications”. I feel angry that these wealthy people think they have the right to this kind of personal health information of their guests and assume it is used to discriminate. I flip back to previous pages that have already been filled to see what others have written for mental health and everyone else has written “IVY” meaning they attended an Ivy League school. The implication being that they are exempt from even having mental health issues and they are all part of the same exclusive club. I’m disgusted by the sense of entitlement and privilege. In defiance I write “N/A” for every column except my name and phone number. For my name I write my maiden name by accident but then decide it is better that way because it might make it harder for them to track me down later. Still holding my baby I hand the clipboard back the woman and go inside to find my sister. My sister leads me to where she’s doing her make up and it’s clear that she never really needed my help, it was just an excuse to get me inside. We both play along. After a few minutes I realize someone must’ve put my baby down somewhere. I look around the room and see the baby sleeping on a cushioned chair. I run over to pick the baby up and the baby immediately starts crying and looks at me and says “that was scary!”. My sense is that the baby had a bad dream because it was their first time being separated from me. I comfort my baby and then have the weird realization that my new baby just spoke a clear sentence. I ask around if it’s normal for a baby this young to be able to speak and others say no. I think to myself that my baby must be extremely brilliant and feel both amazed and a little nervous because I’m not sure what this means for the future of raising this brilliant child.

(If this was your dream what would it be about? Comment below beginning with "If it was my dream..." or "In my imagined version of this dream...")

© Genevieve Camp, Brilliant babies bathing, magazine collage, 5” x 8”