Elizabeth’s Nightmare by June Kosier

It doesn’t pay to read to your daughter before bed and then have a glass of wine while watching the 10:00 news on a stormy night.

On June 7th, 2021 Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s daughter, Lilibet, was born. An explanation was given on how the baby got her name. As a child, England’s Queen Elizabeth used to have trouble pronouncing her name and would always call herself “Lilibet”. The baby was named after her great grandmother, the queen.

Also in the news at that time were stories of possible impeachment of Governor Cuomo over his nursing home policy.

I was reading “Gulliver’s Travels” to my daughter, Kathryn, before bed. In the first section, Gulliver falls asleep and wakes up in Lilliput where the inhabitants are 6 inches tall. Gulliver becomes friends with the emperor and assists him in capturing the navy of a nearby kingdom. Two Lilliputians are jealous of Gulliver and decide to have him impeached but he escapes. In the next adventure, Gulliver lands on another island called Brobdingnag where the inhabitants are 60 feet tall. The queen keeps Gulliver as a pet. Gulliver is constantly in danger. For example, he almost gets trampled to death by a puppy.

That night, my dreams were like falling through the rabbit hole while wearing my pajamas. As thunder and lightning raged outside my window, I dreamt I was one inch tall. A huge woman dressed in robes asks me what my name is. I tell her Lilibet. (My name is Elizabeth, but my nickname is Liz.) She picks me up and I get very scared looking down at the ground many feet below. She says she will take care of me and asks her servants to put me in her dollhouse. They carefully do that and then I feel more at home, but I feel like a baby since all the furniture is still too big for me. The dollhouse is similar to my daughter’s that is a scale of 1-inch equals 1 foot. I happily explore the dollhouse until a canary comes along and looks at me longingly. At first, I hide, but then I decide to make friends with the bird. He reminds me of Kathryn’s canary, Lindy, short for Lindbergh. I ask him what his name is and he tells me it is Excalabird. When I tell him that is a funny name, he tells me that we are in a kingdom and the woman who owns the dollhouse is the queen. I tell him that I am hungry and I want to get out of there.  He offers to fly me to Lilliput where the people are smaller and I might fit in. So, I hop on his back and away we go.

Lilliput is apparently a democracy and Excalabird lets me off inside the state capital where they are deciding whether or not to impeach the governor. Suddenly, I become the governor and Excalabird flies away. The argument is that since I am a “little person” being one sixth the size of a man, I am not tough enough to be governor. Impeachment here includes blinding and starvation, just like in Gulliver’s Travels. A cow passes by, tells me to jump on his back and we fly to the moon and jump over it. I hear the music to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. I think “That is not right, this is the moon, not a rainbow.”

Then I realize, my radio alarm clock is going off and they are playing my favorite song from the “Wizard of Oz”. It is good to wake up.