Dream a Little Dream with Me

There is nothing more dismal than a friend who greets you with "Let me tell you about the dream I had last night..."  Even Seinfeld did a piece about it in a show where Elaine tells Jerry she dreamt he had “wooden teeth”.  Of course it’s other people’s dreams that we dread, who doesn’t love their own world of dreams?  You start out at the dentist and within seconds are sitting on the deck of a beach house you once rented in the Outer Banks.  The amount of morphing and transporting that goes on in dreams is part of their allure.  Not to mention the unlikely pairings – you order coffee from a barista who looks like Mickey Rourke or you and Beyonce are in a taxi driven by your third grade teacher.  Almost everyone has had that kind of goofy dream.  But, I do believe that our dreams are indicative of what is going on and often provide an answer, solution or closure that has previously eluded us.  Anyone who has “dabbled” in the therapeutic world has been told “Remember your dreams.”

I dream nightly and frequently I awake from what many times seems like an all night trip to the multi-plex.  Often I don’t give my dreams a second thought, and they slip from my memory quite quickly.  But, every once in a while a dream sticks with me; I’ve even written some down.  Last night I had an extraordinarily vivid dream about my recently deceased friend, Polly (See blog post, 9/18/12) her daughter (also my friend), Kae, and our mutual friend Nancy  

 Nancy and I (transported back to our youth and rural hometown) are leaving an event on Marshall Hall Road (inexplicitly accompanied by a man I worked with 15 year ago.).  We bid him farewell and decide to visit Kae.  We find her neighborhood under construction and her childhood home transformed into an apartment building. We head down a corridor and a workman, renovating her bedroom and bath, directs us to the living area.  The living room opens onto a small lap pool.  Kae sits on the edge of the pool in the midst of 3 frolicking dogs -- a huge curly-haired dog (could it be Bo?) and two little dogs.  We play with the dogs until I make my way to the back of the house and find a very comfy sitting room.  There Polly greets me and says "Isn't this cozy; look how nice it is here." And it is, complete with open windows & curtains blowing gently in the breeze. I am charmed and remark, "It's great, now you don't have to leave?"

As is the case with dreams, it just ends.  Upon waking, I wonder for a moment, was this about Polly leaving in the ultimate sense?  I guess you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to figure it out -- Yes!  I don’t want her to leave, but in spite of dreaming up a renovation that includes a lap pool, she left.  The up side is that the dream assures me that her leaving is not so bad. 

I share this not to sadden anyone (especially Kae), but to announce that Polly has joined the pantheon of my dreams.  A place where my parents, dear friend Stan and my husband’s brother have joined me in the stands at baseball games and the President’s dog can play a small role.  I don’t know about others, but I dream of my dearly departed often.  Many have been gone for some time… My pleasure with my Polly dream is evident, she’s in a comfy, airy, pleasant space that she loves, and I take that as a good sign.

I’m just saying…