What Dreams May Come

I've never been good about remembering dreams. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, remember one, go back to sleep certain I'll remember it the next day, and when I wake up, it's gone. I've even tried keeping a notebook by the side of the bed to write them down, with the result being the creation of a totally indecipherable half-page scrawl that reads like it was written with the pen gripped between my teeth.

Lately, though, I've been having particularly vivid dreams, some involving my son, or my wife, or my parents. And remembering them, either because they're fairly scary - I had one of those nerve-janglers where your teeth fall out - or because they're epic, like a recent futuristic cross between The Road Warrior and Waterworld....the latter of which, coincidentally enough, was reportedly pitched as "Road Warrior on water. "

Anyway, this dream was set in some sort of post-acocapylptic America. I think a lot of the country was underwater, and lots of services were gone...it was all very bad. And I was in, I don't know, Kansas or Oklahoma, one of those non-descript states, traveling East with a bunch of other people. I have no idea how we were traveling or who these people were.

So at some point I got separated from those people, and I ran into my Dad. And I'm like, Hi Dad! And he said, Hi! And we chatted for a bit, and I mentioned my situation, and he said, well, I can give you a ride as far as Indiana. Which I think I thought was very nice of him to do. And then I remembered my friends and I asked him if he had the (recently purchased Honda) Odyssey -- which in retrospect is certainly an ironic name, given the dream and all. And he said, yes, and I said, see, I'm traveling with all these people. And he wasn't sure he'd have the room, and I agreed, so we sort of shrugged and said goodbye and went off our separate ways.

Later the dream shifted into more of a battle of me and my total stranger friends and some sort of either ruffians or government forces, tough to be sure. But it was the meeting with my Dad that struck me, so I wrote him about it.

My Dad explained the dream as a sort of "what-happens-to-you-when-you-have-another-little-person-around-who depends-on-you-for-everything" situation. The pressure builds up and creates delusional ideas of present reality. (As an aside, he was glad I told him about the dream, as it made him feel needed, somehow, which made perfect sense to me.)

So at a time when my life has something it's never had before - a son - not only am I remembering my dreams, but they're frequently of the apocalyptic variety. And one explanation for this is that I'm feeling the pressure of fatherhood.

I don't talk about it (much), I don't think about it consciously (much), and I don't even know it's there. But it is. And maybe that's part of why I started this blog -- to work through these things here, by writing them down, rather than keeping them in my head and maybe losing them forever.

There's another lesson in that dream somewhere. Ask family for help - that's what they're there for. (Although my Dad thought maybe he was on his way to the Indianapolis 500.) Keep your friends close -- think of them, and maybe they'll return the favor for you someday.

As for Jack, I know he has bad dreams; it's the only explanation for the times he wakes up wailing, out of the blue, for about 30 seconds, and then goes back to sleep. And the next morning he's perfectly fine.

Maybe his Dad comes to him in his dreams to help him out, too. It's nice to think so, anyway.