Sunday, November 25, 2012

Dreaming About Our Mothers


Still reading The Death Fairy by Laird Stevens. With the holiday weekend and all, I'm pecking through it. Last night I get to the conversations where Asia and Jessica discuss their dreams about their mothers. I put the book down because it makes me think about the dreams I've had about my mother.

One of my favorites. We're swimming in a lake outside Paris. (In the real word, she had a scholarship to the Sorbonne. She married my father instead.) It's one of those days; the rays of light coming through the trees are incandescent and the grass is technicolor green. A Monet painting without the sailboats.


My mother is my mother, but she's also about sixteen. In the dream I'm younger than she is, but not much. I'm in the water. Other swimmers laugh and splash around me. People of all ages lounge on the shore and beneath the trees, my mother among them.

When the sun shimmers with the last light of day, I swim to shore. My mother throws me a towel. I squeeze the water from my hair. She's hurrying me along.

"What's the rush?"

"We've got to get to the city," she says. "We're going dancing."

I wake up, filled with life and wonder. What magic, this enchanted interlude transcending the boundaries of time and space.