I Have a Dream

This morning I remembered my dreams, for the first time in months. Better they should have stayed unremembered.

My mother kept on dying, over and over again, and I sobbed dream tears, tears like I haven't had in several months.

There was a jagged hole in the floor. I was afraid that the cats would fall through it, one by one. I covered it over with a heavy rug, but that didn't put down the fear and anxiety.

My mother and I were watching a movie in a theater. It was a fun, colorful picture, but then it turned ugly. This is how you can tell it was a dream: Anderson Cooper came out of a dark, twisted doorway and smiled, proclaiming that he was going to rape the heroine, who had already fallen down on a fire escape. Vague menacing figures spilled out from behind him and rushed the camera.

My mother grew visibly anxious and distressed. I said, "Do you want to leave?" and she nodded.

Instead of getting her into her wheelchair as in real life, I walked beside her towards the theater lobby at the painfully slow pace that was, in later years, the best that she could manage. Mayhem unfolded on the screen behind us. There was screaming, and it could not be blocked out.

I woke with a heavy head, and my whole body feeling as if it was weighted. I felt as if I was walking through a foot of mud.

I used to love remembering my dreams in the morning. They took me to fascinating places and sometimes inspired me. If this is what my dreams have become, I'm glad not to remember them anymore.

I went through my morning chores, not feeling anxious or depressed so much as just heavy and tired. It was Trash Day, and as I carried my two garbage bags down to the street I saw an older woman approaching along the sidewalk from below the house. It was obvious our paths would cross. This distressed me in a minor way. I hate being seen by strangers on my own land, and I dread chance encounters, because you never know how they will work out.

This woman was coming along at a clip. She was quite cheery. She greeted me, and said, "It's going to be a beautiful day!"

There was a cold wind and I wasn't convinced. She said, "There'd be something wrong with us if we complained on a day like this!"

I said, "You're right. Thank you." I set the bags down snd she passed behind me, and we both went about the rest of our day.