September 8, 2011
It’s three a.m. and I just awoke from a dream. It was a fantastic dream, a going-back-in-time dream (my favorite kind). I dreamed of my parents’ house, the house where I lived from the time I was born until the day I was married. But this dream was set in a time long before I was born. Surrounding the house on all sides were fields of rolling farmland. I was an observer in the dream, a visitor from another time there just to see what it was like, what others knew before there was me. Was it really like this? I don’t think so, but the dream was wonderful anyway.
Two majestic oak trees made a border between our property and the property next door, on the right side of the house. Beyond the oaks was a storage shed. It looked more like an old carriage house, with many paned glass windows. I went inside to see if there was a memory there to uncover. I felt something familiar, but nothing concrete. From the vantage point in front of the shed I could see the back and right side of the house and cows in a field beyond where I was standing. I could smell the sweet smell of cut hay and summer breeze and wildflowers. It was exhilarating.
Time passed and my father was there. He was young and robust and gorgeous. He was helping a young me with a rope swing hung in a sprawling ancient oak tree right next to the house, near the kitchen window. I know this was not a real memory, but something my subconscious only wished was true. Then I had an instant realization. I knew why my father never wanted to clear the brush between our house and the neighbors. It was his way of keeping alive his memory of living in a wide open space. With the trees and underbrush as his border he could imagine what was beyond, and live with a hint of his own childhood days on a farm. Again, true? Probably not, but that is how it was revealed to me in my dream.
Fast forward a few years and I see our neighbor from across the street sitting cross-legged in a circle with some of my siblings. We are again on the right side of the house, under the kitchen window. The oak with the rope swing is gone. I see a house, in what was a field, behind her so I know time has passed. My young self is sitting in her lap. This might have been real because I do remember her as a friend. I know if she is there then her mother must be inside so I go in and have a look. She is, and she’s sitting at the kitchen table with my mother having coffee. I see my sister on the opposite side of the table and there I am, an older me at the end, sitting closely to a cousin and smiling and listening to whatever is being said. I look just like I looked in an old black and white photo I have of myself, around the age of 12. My hair is cut in an awkward bob, my mouth is slightly open (so I know it is before adenoid surgery) and I’m wearing an old smock I always wore around the house. In other words, I looked a mess.
My sister asked me to go get something from my father’s room and I knew time had fast forwarded again because the thing she wanted me to get was his will and some papers we had to sign.
That’s about the time I woke up, and I knew I had to write it all down before it faded. The best dreams are remembered just at the time of awakening and they can fade as fast as the dawning sun only to be lingering thoughts, or feelings of deja vous throughout the day. And to me, this dream was worth recording.
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