Poetic License

This is a night that will likely have few dreams, since I can’t seem to sleep, but early this morning, after I had inadvertently shut off my alarm, I had the dream of all dreams. It was rich and lush and stunning in its details, and it went on forever.

In the dream, I awoke to find that someone had gotten into my house while I was sleeping. Something felt … off. I got up and checked the doors and windows, peered out through the drapes, and went back to bed, satisfied that all was well. After all, even Adele hadn’t barked. But I got the sense later that things were happening to my house, so I arose again and went creeping through the house. The sun had not quite breached the horizon. It was that quiet period of the morning, when the noise of the insects has subsided and the dew glistens in the semi-darkness. My back door was open, and I could see that my deck looked different.

The deck had, in fact, been replaced and was outfitted with lush, romantic furniture surrounded with outdoor drapery and sashes. Plants sat here and there on stands–green and vibrant, healthy plants, unlike the ones I am trying to nurse back to health on my actual deck. I could smell the damp earth and the pleasant scent of living foliage.

I said, aloud, “Oh, this is exactly what I wanted! I have wanted to spend more time outside, and in just such a place as this!”

But who was building and furnishing my deck?

A Hispanic man came up to me. He was familiar to me, as though he were someone I had employed before. He was pleased that I liked the deck and said he wasn’t finished yet. He had crewmen working for him, scurrying back and forth outside, building, building. The thought occurred to me that I hadn’t hired anyone or approved any project. He assured me the cost was reasonable. Only twenty-thousand dollars, and there was more to come. He was also rebuilding my kitchen. He told me I needed to pick out a new sink, because my sink and countertop would need to be replaced. (This part was probably due to a conversation I had with my son yesterday about his kitchen.) I found what I thought would be a beautiful, wide, single sink. It was a designer sink. He talked me out of that one for plumbing and other reasons. It was unnecessarily expensive and would take months to get, months we didn’t have.

All the while, the builders kept building. I made coffee and started working while they worked. My day was full and as stressful as always. Sometimes I was in an office; sometimes I was working from home. All in the same day. Time got away from me, so when I returned to my house, not only was the deck finished, but also the kitchen and the bathroom and the laundry room. My small house had grown and expanded (though my kitchen was still small).

Besides all the building they had done on my home, they had cut a creek into my backyard, fed from a river that flowed nearby. It was breathtaking! Not a trivial little creek but one that flowed through my property and was filled with fish. And then I noticed that the kitchen had actually been extended into a bakery and a pizzeria. It reminded me of a mall (remember those?). Everything was beautiful and gleaming. I turned to Paul and said, “Everyone will want to come to our house for parties!”

As my body fought to shake off sleep, because on some level I must have known I was in bed for far too long, I reminded myself that Paul could not have been there, and all those extras could not have been only twenty thousand dollars and I would never get much use from the bakery and pizzeria. But weren’t they lovely? Weren’t they hopeful?

Eventually, I did come out of that wonderful, deep sleep and the luscious dream to the harsh reality I had overslept by an hour. But that dream has stayed with me all day. When we dream about houses, we are really dreaming about ourselves. This dream was about building myself up from okay to glorious. It was about finding satisfaction all around me. It was about trusting someone so deeply that you turn over the keys, so to speak, and let them do the things they are very good at, as I had done with my Hispanic contractor who really knocked it over the big green wall.

It was about finding space that suited me (the carefully outfitted deck) and allowing myself to dream all the rest of it–the shiny new sink, the marble countertop, the iridescent tile backsplash; the French country style of the bathrooms and my room. I was allowing myself to grow and to dream big. I was acknowledging some things I miss (“I have wanted to spend more time outside!”) and some things I wish I had (“Everyone will want to come to our house for parties!”). And something about the dream felt so real, it’s almost as if I could have touched those drapes and sashes and cushions on the furnished deck. My work and my desk didn’t seem as important or appealing to me as they once would have, which is also telling.

The further I go into my sixties, the less satisfied I am with my job. Today was just another bad day in a string of them lately, a day in which I couldn’t wait to walk away from my office and into the living room with my animal babies. They are always glad to see me and to play. They don’t demand, and they love me no matter what shape I’m in. But I need more out of life.

I’m not saying that I don’t want my animals. Not at all. I’m saying that I need to find a way to hang up the corporate cable in the next three years in favor of turning myself over to my own writing, which makes me happy. Three years isn’t forever, but as I’ve learned, we’re never promised our next breath. Just before I left the dream, an older woman I was sitting with in the kitchen leaned toward me and apologized.

“I have severe OCD, dear,” she said, “so I hope you’ll forgive my rudeness. I just must know what this is.”

At that point, she placed the tip of one thin finger over a tiny lump just above my thyroid gland. I felt it, too.

“Yeah, I have an appointment with my doctor next week,” I said. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

She looked down her long, thin nose and leaned back into her seat. “Hmm,” she said.

And I swear that when I woke up this morning, I had to feel my neck, my glands, my armpits, and my boobs, just in case. I haven’t found anything, but it wouldn’t be the first prophetic dream I’ve had. I’m hoping, though, that this last conversation was just a manifestation of my ever-present cancer anxiety.

Whatever will be, will be. Meanwhile, dream on, friends.

Namaste,

Jude