The Dream

The Dream -


I was on a bus coming from nowhere and going nowhere. I cared not for destinations, but for the manner of travel, or rather I should say, who I was traveling with. We met on that bus and I think we both were instantly smitten. Her eyes were a deep liquid brown with light specks and shone with kindness. They were large and inviting, almond-shaped beneath rounded eyebrows, above a button nose, and full pink lips all on a heart shaped face with high cheekbones and a single dimple on her right side when she smiled. Her hair was light brown, shoulder length, and smelled of strawberries, framing her smooth flawless neck. She held my hand and smiled at me as we shared our innermost thoughts and feelings and then after a while she leaned up against me and I placed my arm around her. I held her for ages as we continued to talk, as our souls became more and more intertwined until you could not tell where my soul ended and hers began and then she finally turned to me, reached up to caress my face and kissed me. Her lips were soft, warm, wet, and sweet as she explored my mouth and I drank her in. I remember such joy, peace, and contentment. I had reached the culmination of my heart’s desires, and then I woke up.

I lay on my side while my cell phone chimed at me telling me that it was time to get up. Another glorious day of work. I tried to lay still, keeping my eyes closed. The feelings of joy and contentment from my dream lingered and I tried to hold on to them. I clung to the image of Her face and fought wakefulness. My alarm simply wouldn’t quit, so I fumbled for my phone, cursing Google all the while, and managed to knock it and my glasses off my bedside table. I cursed a bit more as I leaned over the bed and felt around blindly because I knew if I tried to get out of bed I would inevitably step on my glasses. Eventually I found my glasses, put them on, and then located that most raucous device.

Once the cacophony of my alarm had been silenced I snuck back under the covers and rolled over to curl up behind my wife. I curved myself around her and engulfed her in my arms, her warmth pressed up against me. With my eyes closed I reached out for those lingering feelings right before I was rudely awoken, willing myself to return to my dream. Sleep did not fully come but my memories were still fresh and I lingered between wakefulness and sleep clinging to that last moment before what we call reality forced itself onto my consciousness. The dream was real as were the emotions they stirred, emotions that still swirled around my heart. At this moment, as I floated in limbo separating dream from reality I knew the Dream was the more authentic of the two, and it was the woman from my Dream in bed with me, not this woman I have called wife.

My blasted phone went off again. I must have hit snooze instead of turning the fracking thing off. Grumbling and cursing I roll over again and get out of bed. I’ve lingered too long and won’t have time to make myself breakfast this morning, so as tends to be the case most mornings breakfast will be coming from the drive-thru. I looked back at my wife. I love my wife, I recalled, as I quickly dress for work, but I also hate her. After 20 years, no one else on earth has hurt me, used me, or degraded me as the woman I lay next to each night. Love and hate, these are the by products of marriage I mused as I rushed out the door, trying to decide where breakfast will be this glorious day.

The memories of the Dream continued lingering with me as I faced the morning commute. Oh the joy, the contentment, and now that I’m up and facing what I grudgingly call reality, the loss I feel. I grew somber as I pined for the love I still remembered so vividly from my Dream girl. It was real in that moment, though reason tells me it was only a dream. Dammit, real or not, I’m going to explore these feelings and let them play out. I relished in the sweet bitterness of love lost and the memory of the pinnacle of contentment as I drove the 45 minutes to the office.

I get to work and check my email. Some co-workers are asking for my assistance in solving a problem that’s been plaguing them for months. A bit of code isn’t working as expected. Analysts aren’t getting all the data they need to do their jobs. Some of the data disappears. Engineers can’t duplicate the problem and what they can’t duplicate they can’t fix. This isn’t really my job anymore, but it sounds like an interesting problem and I’ve been aware of it on the sidelines for some time, so I fire up a new Linux VM and checkout the latest version of the code from the company's private GitHub. I spend half the morning downloading all the dependencies I need to compile the code and get completely engrossed in the task at hand.

At one point I sit back and look around at my co-workers. “I really love my job,” I think. I have the respect of my peers and I get to do what I enjoy on a regular basis. It’s a wonderful thing for your hobby to become your career. The people I work with are great and I have several close friends working with me. I remember the hard times in my life and look around at the people who were there for me when I needed someone. There’s Jacob who took me to the ER when I broke my leg, stayed with me as they checked me in, and checked on me after the surgery and every day until he drove me home. Johnny, who drove me to work for 3 months while my leg healed. He told me it was on his way, but I later learned he was driving almost an hour out of his way each day and he would never accept money for gas. Chris, who’s been my confidante when my marriage has been rocky. Through the years, these people have become family, not just co-workers. I am happy and content here and then I remember the Dream. The emotions that I still feel from that moment before waking are so intense, so real. I close my eyes for a moment and shut the world out as I relish in the pain of knowing what I had for that brief moment was only a dream. Then I sigh, lean forward and launch gdb so I can start some debugging.

Lunch time comes around and I’m feeling the need for solitude. I grab a sandwich from the cafe downstairs, then go to the parking garage and sit in my car while I eat. I’ve been listening to the Audible version of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman. It seems to fit my mood. I think about Richard Mayhew meeting Door, and how she turns his world upside down as he discovers London Below. Do you ever get the feeling that there’s a whole world, one full of meaning and purpose, danger and adventure, just below the surface of the world you know? I feel like that world is right there, like I can almost see it, taste it, touch it. “I mean, maybe I am crazy. I mean, maybe. But if this is all there is, then I don't want to be sane,” Richard tells Door. If I could find that place from my dream, the world below the surface, and get on the right bus to Nowhere, She would be there waiting for me. Anticipation combined with loss filled me with somberness, and I reveled in the beauty of it. But alas, it’s been an hour already and it’s time to get back to work.

Work was over and I was parked on the freeway in the midst of the afternoon rush to get home. I looked around at my fellow travelers and wondered about their lives. What are they going through right now? The woman next to me looked like she might be pregnant. I couldn’t see her face very well, but she didn’t look happy. Was she simply unhappy with the traffic, or was it something more? Did she just come from the doctor? Did she get bad news? Is the baby’s father still around? Will the birth go well? Will they be happy? Who will this child grow up to be? On the other side of me sat a couple in a large pickup. He took the opportunity to steal a kiss since no one seemed to be moving. I stared and thought back to that kiss in the Dream. Someone honked and I realized the line of cars in front of me started moving again.

My daughter was on the front porch waiting on me with a hug and a kiss. I basked in the love of a child. Nothing I have experienced compares to the joy my children give me. I held my little girl as she lay her head on my shoulder and we went inside, both of us smiling and content. Inside, the house is a mess and the other kids were fighting about something, always fighting about something. Their mother, the woman I called wife, scowled at me as a stepped in the door, through her hands up in the air and stormed off into the bedroom screaming, “Deal with it!”

This day went much as most days do for me in this reality. Most of the details you can pick out and place in any other day, these moments are all interchangeable. They fit together to form the jigsaw of my story. But that one day, the Dream stuck with me till I fell asleep that night. I don’t remember Her name, I can’t remember Her face, and I don’t feel the things I felt on that day, but I remember that I felt them. I also remember the next day, I woke up and there were no dreams from the night before, life simply continued on.

Sixty years later and I’m lying in a bed in a hospital room surrounded by family. My children are there with their children and grandchildren and their grandchildren’s children. My wife left long, long ago and started a new family. The youngest of the group crawls up on my bed, her two front teeth missing, and she shows me a picture, “Papaw, look what I drew. It’s you, on a bus, and me on your lap, and there’s Mommy and Daddy, and all of us.”
“Where are we going?” I ask her.
“Nowhere,” she shrugs.
“And who is that sitting next to me?”
“Just some woman.”
I tell her what a beautiful picture it is, I thank her and she gives me a hug and a kiss. The love of a child is still the sweetest joy I have tasted. She leans back against me as I tell her and the other children a story of three little pigs. They laughs at my gruff wolf voice and the little ones take turns doing the high-pitched squeaky voices of the little pigs.
Night comes, and they leave me to rest. Tomorrow is my birthday. I will be one hundred, a nice round number I ponder with a weary smile.
“What a lovely family you have.” I look up as a doctor walks into my room. Her hair was grey and thin but her eyes were liquid brown with light specks and shone bright as she looked down at me with kindness.
“Thank you,” I say. “It’s quite the horde I’ve spawned.”
She chuckles at that and pulls up a chair. She brings out her phone and shows me pictures of her family. We sit and talk for some time.
“Don’t you have other patients?” I ask after a while, longing for her to stay, but knowing life must go on without me.
“My shift is over,” she tells me, then after a moment’s pause, “May I tell you a secret?” she asks.
“Why, of course,” I tell her. I look left and right, and then in a surreptitious tone add, “I’m very good at keeping secrets.”
“I had a dream once, long ago,” she continues. “I know it may sound crazy, but I believe that I dreamt I met you. We met on a bus going Nowhere.”
I smile, “I may be crazy too, because I already knew, but if this is crazy, I don’t want to be sane.”
She smiles back and reaches for my hand. At the touch of her hand I feel content. I pull her hand to my thin, withering lips and give them a peck. The world moves on, but I do not. Clutching her hand, my heart filled with the warmth of joy, the joy of a job well done, contentment from having all that I could want, and I lay my head back, close my eyes, and leave the real world behind so I could Dream.