I am in a recently-plowed garden on a gently sloping hillside with Daniel and David. They are young, maybe 6 and 4 years old. Daniel is watering some plants, or maybe recently planted seeds, while David and I are somewhat below him on the slope. Playfully, Daniel aims the hose at me. For some reason that makes me very angry and I shout at him and tell him that was a stupid thing to do. Immediately I feel bad about my anger and about calling him stupid, neither of which did he deserve.
I take the boys inside the house, perhaps cutting short our time in the garden as a way of punishing Daniel, though I'm not sure about that. At any rate, Daniel walks across the tile floor in his slightly muddy bare feet. I am alarmed that Susan might be upset about his tracks on the floor so I yell at Daniel to get into the bathroom immediately so we can wash off his feet, but Susan tells me not to get upset at Daniel about it because she is not upset with him.

I woke up grieving that I had been angry at Daniel, yelling at him and criticizing him for no reason. As I thought of how he was such a trusting and helpful child, and how he would always remember that his Daddy had called him stupid, I was filled with regret which was all the more painful when I considered how I could not take back those words or undo the damage I had done.
There was more to the dream but I only remember those two scenes. Neither scene represents any actual incident that I can recall, nor does the setting of the dream recall any actual location. Nonetheless the feelings I felt in and about the dream are not completely unfamiliar. My regrets, however vague and ill defined they are, center around how I devoted too little time with the boys, paid too little attention to them, and failed to look for ways to involve them in what few practical things I did around the house. Gardening though, is something that the boys and I did together, each at our own level, and I think that they enjoyed it.
I regarded myself as selfish back then, more absorbed in my own interests than in my own children. That is not really what the dream is about though. Prominent in the dream is my regret, and my anger, and I don't know what that anger is about. Regret feels like a form of loss - loss of opportunity perhaps, and particularly in this case, a loss of innocence. Daniel's innocence is manifested in his unfamiliarity with pain and mine in my unfamiliarity with the anger within, and through my expression of that anger both are lost.