Forget the Surgery, What about the Dream?

Week 13: I thought the day would never come. I finally had surgery this past Wednesday, Jan 28th. By all accounts it went very smoothly. But I'll tell you more about it later. Right now I need to write down what I can remember of the strange dream I had while I was coming out of my post-surgery haze. I have no idea why these random, out-of-order memories from the past spilled into my sleep. If anyone wants to analyze my dream, I'd love to hear your theories.

First, I'm a few thousand feet above the earth, in a freefall … gravity having its way. One way, no choice. Now the chute is open, I’m alone, adrift. Out before me are patches of green, patches of brown, fields, trees, buildings, roads, rays of sun, shadows cast by the clouds overhead, all representing tiny, fragmented pieces of my life. Over there, next to the train tracks, is the old, one-room church where my youngest sister, Jennifer, was baptized. Just about a mile away from that is the Catholic school I attended, and where the new church was built. That was where I made my first Communion, and where I nearly fainted during my Confirmation. I had to be taken outside for air in the middle of the ceremony. I returned there years later to get married, and now it's become the place where I said good-bye to my father. Now I can see the rented school bus that took us from the church to our wedding reception. My reception was the last time I ever saw my cousin, Mike K, alive. It was the first time I danced with my Dad and the only time I accused my sister of ruining my wedding during my post-reception meltdown. A little further off is the meadow where me and my husband, Mike, ran into his sister, Michelle, at a wine-tasting festival one very hot afternoon. It was there she announced to us that she was pregnant with her first child, who came to be my niece, Victoria. It’s the same meadow where my friends and I watched countless Gold Cup steeplechase races, where there were many tipsy moments when we acted like a horse’s ass, patted a horse’s ass, or danced on cars. I can see the outcropping of rocks where a group of us used to go to hang-out when we skipped school. We’d hike up the mountain and spend the day enjoying the view, smoking pot and watching birds of prey ride the wind. There’s sunlight reflecting off the lake where my husband spent time as a kid, where we returned to visit his grandmother, and ultimately, where my father-in-law died. Off in another direction is the neighborhood where I had a paper-route and where I crashed my bike straight into a parked car when I wasn’t watching where I was going. That gravel road over there... that’s the road I was taken down when I was abducted and raped. There’s the intersection where I had my first accident. I was driving my Dad’s green, Datsun B210 on the way to a summer job interview. I didn’t get that job. And you see that tree? That’s where I got stung by bees on the way home from one of our daily, sometimes twice daily, walks to the shopping center, back when we were kids wasting time on summer break. There is the drugstore where we’d go to eat French fries and smoke cigarettes, keeping a look-out for our mothers the entire time. We never actually spotted them, but we believed they had spies. How else could they know we'd been smoking? Well, duh... we never realized how much we reeked of it when we went home! The tiny Volkswagon I see off in the distance is my first car, bought with a loan from my Dad and paid back in full from my job at IBM during my senior year of high school. Near the IBM is the Mall where we spent our weekends loitering. That was during a time in our lives when we listened to everything from BeeGees pop music to Black Sabbath heavy metal. It was also when both my twin sister, Joan, and one of our friends, Cheryl, fell in love with an Andy Gibb look-alike named John who worked in the Roy Rogers. Unfortunately, Andy Gibb is now dead by his own hand, and sadly, the look-alike was murdered about a year ago. Our friend is still our friend some thirty years later. There’s the glint of a jet overhead, the one that often sped me to the west coast for conferences at Cisco. Beyond the mountain is a stretch of valley where my precious nieces, Taylor and Elise, are growing up. I can see a Cessna passing below me. It’s the puddle-jumper we took to the Outer Banks one weekend. I was in the back seat sleeping next to my then-infant daughter, and my then-greatest fear, but forever my greatest treasure. Mike was our pilot. Our whacky but so-sweet German Shorthaired Pointer, Suzie, flew shotgun. The farmhouse off in the other direction is where, during my later years in high school, we went to field parties, listened to bands and drank under-age. The little brick rambler I can see is the first house I ever bought, and the house that I eventually fled to escape an abusive relationship. The hedge of trees down below is where I hid from the cops when they chased us for lighting-off firecrackers in the alley behind the shopping center. The bend in the road over there is where a friend crashed her car violently into a ditch and hit a tree. One of her passengers was air-lifted to the trauma center. Joan was also in the car that night, but she survived, thank God. I was at a movie with my then-boyfriend, Bobby. There’s a river snaking down the valley. I can see the rapids we rode during a whitewater rafting trip. It was the time when Joan, my future brother-in-law, Mark, and my then pre-pubescent nephew, Michael, ventured out of their comfort zone and came along for the adventure. Joan showed up ready to paddle wearing white shorts, a white jacket and lipstick. "Novice," I thought to myself as shook my head in disbelief, smirking at the humor of it. Miraculously, ours was the only raft out of eight to make it past Dimple Rock without capsizing. A few years later, I went down the same river on another memorable trip, the time that I first “noticed” my future husband. Near that is the hospital where my sister, Beth, was born, and where I coached her through her own labor and delivery when she gave birth to my delightful nephew, Jackson. Now I'm looking out at the whole of what's before me. All is calm. The wind is quiet. 'Not sure where I’ll land. I just hope it’s soft. And I don’t know what direction I will walk.

Then "poof," that was it. End of story. The memories in my dream stopped abruptly, leaving me to drift with only those last thoughts in my head as I looked across the landscape of my life.