To Sleep Perchance to Dream

When my children were young they would often ask me if dreams come true.  As a strong believer that you make your own luck, I always answered in the affirmative.  Am I not living the dream?  Isn’t this, as my son would argue, a “charmed life?”  And in truth, don’t we really have the power to determine how we live?  Certainly there are circumstances beyond our control that challenge us—genetics, economics, disease, being in the wrong place at a woefully unfortunate time—but what we do from there is up to us.  We can choose to let the winds of chance take us down or we can conjure our strength from the inspiration of the moment.  My mantra, whether at work or at home, has always been, “Make it so.”

Of course, another way to describe this philosophy is “control freak.”  I do not suffer fools gladly.  I do not accept defeat gracefully.  And I do not leave things to chance.  One such area where I chose a preemptive attack over serendipity was at bedtime with my kids.  It took being awakened in the dead of night only once or twice to decide it was not for me.  Thereafter, I would put my children to bed and “give them dreams”—story lines for slumber that carried them away to a place they helped define, where they felt safe and happy.  My son was a secret superhero, wandering the streets with his true identity undetected.  His superpower was the ability to fight anger and hatred; his presence miraculously disarmed aggressive strangers and made them get along.  Bullies were powerless in his presence.  Thieves abandoned their nefarious plans.  Guns couldn’t fire.  Everyone would go home and have a yummy home-cooked dinner with their families.

My daughter liked to be transported to a land of butterflies, daffodils and rainbows, where everything was wrapped in color and beauty.  In the world of her design, people became sweet, they sang in perfect harmony, and they were left-handed—‘tis a consummation devoutly to be wished!  There, the structures yielded to the needs of the people—producing food, or money, or clothes, or music from magical wishing drawers.  Life conformed to functional needs:  where there was ice, figure skates would lace themselves onto your feet and take you away; where there was water you became a mermaid. 

I realize only now that even these dreams of innocent youth (poo poo poo) are coming true before my eyes.  My son, a sociology major, is interested in working with at-risk teenagers and juvenile courts.  My daughter is studying architecture and environmental design.  The connection between their evolving adult selves and their childhood dreams is hard to ignore.  As a parent, I enjoy watching them work to “make it so.”

Although I do not believe in fate, I continue to believe that dreams can come true.  Because of this, I must make a final confession.  When my husband and I were first married nearly thirty years ago, it wreaked havoc with my natural sense of independence and individualism.  I learned early in life to depend upon no one and there I was, suddenly, half of a couple.  I began having frightening dreams of my own, all easily interpreted to show how much this man meant to me.  One horrible dream recurred frequently and vividly.  In it, my husband was discovered drowned, floating in shallow water. He was wearing his favorite grey workout shorts—the same ones he was wearing when I snapped a treasured photo of him during a pick-up baseball game.  Something about this dream in particular shook me to the core.  The sensation of loss and emptiness it imparted lingered for days afterward.  I couldn’t shake free of its hold on me.  Fed up with the helplessness, I came home and took those grey shorts out of the drawer.  Without giving it another thought, I took a sharp pair of scissors and cut those shorts into shreds.  It seemed kind of crazy, but without those shorts there was no way that dream could ever come true!  

To his credit, my husband never made me feel bad about destroying his favorite shorts.  I tried to replace them but, fortunately or unfortunately, basketball players began wearing long baggy shorts soon after and short-shorts were gone from the stores forever.  For many years we owned a sailboat and my husband loved to take his friends out on blustery days.  I would often interrogate him about how he planned to dress out on the Harbor, but I am not sure he ever made the connection to that time long ago.  To this day, I do not let him get too close to a body of water without first taking notice of what he is wearing.

Tomorrow's blog:  Ten Obnoxious Things That Are Ruining the World