Dreams

I have pretty vivid dreams. They almost always have some kind of plot (not necessarily coherent, but it's there). They're in color, usually involve people and/or locations I know, and they're almost always offbeat. I dream often, but I only remember very few of them.

I don't remember last night's dream, but I do remember holding a conversation with a guy like he was really standing next to me. It was one of those dreams that felt so much like the real world that it was difficult to tell the difference (I could even physically feel and smell things in the dream). I can't for the life of me remember what that dream was about, but it somehow brought to mind another dream I had months ago. That one I do remember.

The dream was set in Carlsbad, where I grew up. Most dreams exist in certain locations that bear little to some resemblance of the place it was supposed to be, but not this one. I was at the house I grew up in on Lake Street. The house was as I remember it (the back part was not there, so it took place long after the fire). The hill it was on, the houses around it, the fence that was put up after the fire, it was all there.

In this dream, for some reason the family was back in this house (we have not lived there since the very end of 1996). Julie, my first stepmother, was there, and she was running back and forth taking care of all kinds of things. In fact, there were a lot of people there running about making preparations. I even had to run off to run errands of my own (Carlsbad even looked like Carlsbad). I recognized some family members, but none of them really stood out, just Julie, who would ask me to do a few things and give some encouragement on what was ahead (she really do the latter on occasion), and my sister Michelle The day was relaxed, yet nervous. Tables were set up everywhere. Decorations were put up, pictures dotted everything. I was reminded that the ceremony was only a few hours away.

It was my wedding day.

I don't know how the time passed, really, but several hours suddenly became just two. It was getting to be evening. Most everything was set up and ready inside. Stuff have to be set up and prepared outside (the backyard was very big for being in the city). The bride stepped out in her wedding dress and walked up and down the driveway in the back yard, stopping to chat with the minister.

I have no idea who the bride was.

While I was watching whatever was on TV, the bride's mother, an older woman who couldn't stand for very long, came in to the kitchen and had a seat. I apparently hadn't seen her all day, so I walked in to say hi. She was sporting a flight jacket, one that her late husband wore back in some war he fought in long before I was born. I asked her about it because I never saw her wore it before. She began tell her husband's story, one she was very fond of.

But I never got to hear it. At that point, I somehow knew it was time to wake up, that that story was only meant for the man hearing it, the me in the dream.

I woke up from that with enough time to get up and get ready for work, but I stalled for a bit. Aside from the small quirks in the details, it was a dream that could very well have happened. It was a pleasant dream. It was a nice dream. It was just a dream. I sat there for several minutes unable to shake the haunting feeling the dream gave, or the subsequent discouragement. I was unable to grasp its full meaning. Somewhere along the way, I missed something very important.

Come to think of it, I remember now the dream I had last night, that the man I was talking to wanted to know where or how I was going to come up with what was missing, like it was some kind of debt that needed payment. It was something valuable, but it wasn't money. I just don't remember what it was that I was asked for.