Save a place for me

Last night, for the first time since my Mom died, I dreamed about both of my parents. We were watching the eclipse from the broad lawn outside a tall office building where I was employed, not either of the colleges where I work in real life.

As we were milling about, I ran into a neighbor and introduced him to a coworker who had the same name as his wife. My Mom and Dad mingled with the crowd of eclipse-watchers while I wandered off to look for crescent-shaped shadows on the sidewalks beneath a small patch of ornamental trees.

After the eclipse ended, my Mom, Dad, and I decided to walk to a nearby restaurant for an early dinner. I got a text saying either my Mom or Dad and I had to sign some important financial paperwork at CVS (?), but we figured we’d do it the next day since they’d probably be closed by the time we got there.

On the way to the restaurant, I got separated from my parents in the crowd of people leaving after the eclipse. Arriving at the restaurant alone, I found it packed with people, and my parents were nowhere to be found.

I claimed a table by the entrance to the restaurant and sat waiting, wondering if my Mom and Dad had gone to sign the paperwork without me. After spending almost an hour searching the faces of every customer entering or exiting the restaurant, I stood to leave.

As I gathered my things, I saw Mom and Dad sitting in a booth at the rear of the restaurant I hadn’t seen when I’d arrived. Before them were the empty plates of their finished meals, and at the end of the table was the untouched burger and fries they’d ordered for me.

 

The trail not taken

I have a recurring dream where I am hiking in a large park with a sprawling network of wooded trails. Before setting out, I study the trail map and decide to explore a far-flung corner I’ve never tried before, but first I walk to a nearby ravine where a river wends along a sandy shore, surrounded by moss-covered outcrops and the echoing calls of distant birds. Every time I revisit this dream, I wake before I leave the quiet cove, never venturing beyond the known path to deeper, more distant woods.

In last night’s version, the sky threatened rain as I set out to walk. Other hikers thronged the park’s visitor center, and another woman grabbed the last trail map ahead of me. After searing for more maps, I found a large, laminated one in a dusty closet, rolled up in a bird identification poster. I claimed the map but left the poster behind, rolling the map and tucking it inside my jacket, next to my heart.

As I set out toward the quiet cove, however, the paths outside the visitor center were unfamiliar and strange, branching into a meandering maze of well-trod trails. After arbitrarily choosing a direction to go, I came to an intersection where a huge red arrow on a sign the size of a barn door clearly pointed in the direction I shouldn’t go.

 

My fair research question

Last night I dreamed I fell down an Internet rabbit hole trying to determine whether the rain in Spain really does stay mainly in the plain.

 

Strange bedfellows

Last night, I dreamed I was visiting my mother. She was staying in an apartment complex I had never visited before, and I kept getting lost in a maze of corridors and courtyards.

As I circled the complex trying to find my way, I kept passing a leafless beech tree with a large cavity in its trunk. “That would be a great nest for an owl,” I thought to myself…and indeed, after passing the same tree umpteen times, I finally looked inside the hole and saw a great horned owl roosting next to a sleeping calico cat.

I snapped a photo of the two creatures then shared it on Instagram with the caption “Roommates.” When I finally found my Mom’s apartment, I excitedly told her about the owl and cat, but when I tried to show her the photo on my phone, I couldn’t get it to load.

 

Multi-dreaming

Last night I dreamed I was following a long, convoluted story involving a couple of college students who were unwittingly embroiled in a bungling terrorist ring. The story spanned several continents, was told in a nonlinear fashion, and involved crashes, explosions, and a Formula One car race.

It wasn’t clear whether I was watching this story on TV or if I somehow knew the students in real life: dreams are fuzzy that way. But one thing was clear: as this epic story of adventure, intrigue, and danger unfolded, I was diligently trying to write lecture notes for today’s classes. At this point of the semester, I multi-task even in my dreams.

 

The rules of succession

Last night I dreamed I had a brief conversation with Prince Harry. I was working at some sort of office, and Harry-In-My-Dream was passing through on some other business, so we exchanged pleasantries as you would with a colleague around the water cooler.

Harry-In-My-Dream casually mentioned that King Charles would soon be stepping down from his throne in order to retire. Once that happened, Prince Harry-In-My-Dream explained, he would return to the UK to become King.

“But what about your brother,” I asked, since Prince William, not Harry, is next in line to become King.

“Oh, he doesn’t want the job, given all the hassle,” Prince Harry-In-My-Dream explained. “William would much prefer to live a quiet life with his family and leave the headaches of the monarchy to me.”

“But is this possible,” I wondered aloud. “Can the Royal Family simply ignore the rules of succession in order to decide amongst themselves who should ascend the throne…and don’t you yourself want to live a life outside public scrutiny?”

“But of course,” Prince Harry-In-My-Dream chuckled. “When you’re King you can do whatever you’d like…and things will be much easier this way.”

There was an awkward pause, so to fill it I asked, “So, how are the kids?”

 

Get me to the game on time

Today is sunny and cold, the inverse of yesterday, which was warm but gray. I check the weather app on my phone every morning to determine what coat I should wear when I walk Roxy, and sometimes the coat I wear in the morning is not the coat I wear in the afternoon.

Last night I dreamed about coats: or at least, one coat. J and I were going to an outdoor sports event–something major like the Super Bowl, but not the Super Bowl–with a nameless group of friends? Extended family? The specifics are fuzzy, but we were car-pooling to the game with this group, so we had to coordinate getting everyone ready.

For some reason, we had to dress up for this unspecified event, and someone had bought me a stylish long tweed coat: the kind of coat a fifties starlet would wear in a movie while tearfully saying goodbye to her secret lover at a train station.

The coat was pale brown, and it was determined by our faceless friends that the cream-colored infinity scarf my personal shopper had chosen to go with the coat definitely did not, so I was rummaging through closets trying to find either of two crushed chenille scarves I used to own–one olive green, the other chestnut brown–in the hope one of them would be a better choice.

After much delay in which I couldn’t find said scarves, we determined online that a store in a nearby mall had a wide selection of scarves, so we tried to gather our entourage–which by now had wandered off, bundling on then off again their own outfits and accouterments–into our carpool convoy. I have no idea if we made it to the game on time.

 

Incorrigible

This morning, instead of waking up with a song in my head, I awoke with a word: INCORRIGIBLE. This word appeared in my head with absolutely no context, as if someone had decided out of the blue to implant a random mantra in my mind. If a song you can’t get out of your ear is an earworm, is a random word burrowed in your brain a mindworm?

When I tried to think of any reason for “incorrigible,” I couldn’t come up with any. If I’d awoken with “inconceivable” in my head, I could blame The Princess Bride. If “unforgettable” were in mind, I could blame Nat King Cole. “Dirigible” might have appeared due to recent news stories about the Chinese spy balloon. But try as I might, I can’t think of any famous quotes, memes, or news stories involving “incorrigible.”

I did dream last night, but what I remember about those dreams is ragtag and fragmentary, with nothing shedding light on “incorrigible.”

In one dream, my brother and I were a “Scooby Doo”-style crime solving team searching for clues in an odd assortment of crimes. (I should note that in real life, I don’t have a brother.) In one caper, we were sharing a brownstone with random friends, and a group of bad guys broke through our kitchen window looking for guns. Naturally, we suspected a mysterious neighbor who parked his enormous SUV in his spacious kitchen.

In another dream, J and I were photographing a bombed-out building with posters on the doors that said “If you lived here, you’d be homeless by now.” The building had a standing frame, but the walls and windows had been blown out, and for some reason people were filling out raffle tickets for a multimillion dollar prize, slipping those tickets through the mailslot in the (intact) doors.

These dreams are curious enough, but none of them offer any clues into “incorrigible.”

 

Uncertainty and drama

The other night I had a disjointed dream that seemed to take place in my 20s or 30s, when my life was filled with uncertainty and drama.

I was apparently still married to (and trying to separate from) my ex-husband, although he himself never appeared in the dream. I was both living in and trying to move into the Zen Center, and I both had and was looking for a job, recognizing I’d need a source of summer income if I was leaving my marriage and moving, too.

In the midst of so much uncertainty, I was also afraid I might be pregnant, so I went to the doctor for an ultrasound, only to discover I was carrying…a stick of butter.

 

Unsettled

Last night I dreamed that J and I took one of our dogs, Djaro, for a walk in a park. It had recently rained, and one of the grassy fields was flooded with ankle-deep water. Djaro charged into the water and laid down, covering himself with mud.

When I tried to take a photo of Djaro lying in the water, I tapped the wrong button and changed my phone settings, making the camera unresponsive. In the meantime, J called for Djaro to come, and Djaro jumped into J’s arms, leaving a dog-shaped muddy imprint on the front of J’s sweatshirt. By the time I got my camera to work, the mud had dried and I’d lost the moment.

Later in the same (or a separate) dream, J and I went to a large, crowded shopping mall. We had lunch in a restaurant where we sat in a booth, and I went to the restroom before we left. When we exited the mall, we had to descend a long, crowded escalator. Halfway down, J and I were separated, and as J reached the ground level, I realized I’d left my purse and phone upstairs in the mall.

Shouting to J that I had to go back, I turned around and fought the crowds to climb the escalator. I returned to the restaurant and checked the booth where we’d sat, but my purse wasn’t there. I returned to the restroom and had to wait in line (of course) to enter one stall after another, looking in vain for my purse and phone.

Although my smartwatch showed my phone was still connected via Bluetooth, I couldn’t find it anywhere. I wished I could tell J to call my phone so I could hear it ringing in the crowded mall, but he was outside and I had no way to reach him.

The dream ended before I found my purse and phone, and without me reuniting with J outside. I awoke with the unsettled feeling of waiting for a resolution that never comes.