Fiona, my youngest daughter, has been fighting some sort of summer cold. The night before last, she had a nightmare, and crawled into bed next to me. My wife Kim often has problems sleeping, so I acted as a buffer between the agitated child and the exhausted mother. They both ended up sleeping well and I was the one to go without sleep.

As a result, I went to bed early last night and slept soundly, until about five o'clock in the morning, when I awoke in the middle of a curious dream. I don't often remember my dreams, and when I do, all that remains seem like fragments of an epic imagist poem. This morning's dream was different.

I was at some out doors festival, sort like Falcon Ridge Folk Festival, but the space was smaller, more intimate and more wooded and shady. There was an air of a Renaissance festival to it. I set up my tent, ran into a friend from work, whom I talked about the festival with and then sat down to watch some play. The audience gathered. A little after the play was to begin, an older bearded and rotund man came out on the play and announce that there was some difficulty. The audience waited and started to grow impatient. My daughter Miranda was next to me, a details I hadn't noticed prior to this. She read through the program and drew on a piece of paper she had.

A member of the audience got up to leave and Miranda sprang into action. She leapt onto the stage and proclaimed herself Miranda the Bunny. It was a children's play, with children in the cast, so this was completely fitting with the play. She held up her drawing, which was of a rabbit's face and which she used as a mask. She asked the person about to leave where he thought he was going. He mumbled something about being upset that the play hadn't started and he was going to go find something else to do.

Miranda countered that the play had already begun, and was going on around us all the time. The rotund man came out onto the stage, mostly in costume and character, with a quizzical look. He observed what was going on and started improvising with Miranda. Kids in the play slowly made it onto the stage.

Miranda spends her time storytelling and teaching kids, and she interacted with the kids, who had problems, given the turn of events staying in character. Some tried to be in character as they interacted with Miranda others were out of character, and took up roles closer to that of narrators of the play. Miranda started interacting with the kids in the audience. Soon the problem that had delayed the start of the play was resolved, and the play began in earnest. The rotund man who had appeared frustrated, at first, with the problems his troupe had been facing, complicated by a disgruntled audience and an interloper on the stage, finally saw what Miranda had been able to do, and welcomed her into the play, which being full of children, had some room for adaptation, if done in such a way that the youngest of actors could still get their cues and deliver their lines.

As sleep faded and I looked over at the alarm clock, I realized that I was now awake enough, and it was close enough to my regular time to get up that it would be just as good if I got out of bed and started my morning rituals.

Yesterday was a trying time at work for myself and several people that I work with, but as they say in show business, the show must go on, and there are times you need to ad lib. Perhaps life is like that as well. It made me think of Jaques in As You Like It, intoning "All the world's a stage".

Miranda's presence on the stage also made me think of Cyrano when he challenged Montfleury, yet the setting was different. There is tension when an interloper takes to the stage, and it takes a Jodelet to bring humor to the tense setting and to prepare for tomorrow's farce.

But now, the clock has struck six and I need to start my daily chores.