“Losing things is about the familiar falling away . . . Imagine yourself streaming through time, shedding gloves, umbrellas, wrenches, books, friends, homes, names.”
-Rebecca Solnit, ”Open Door” from A Field Guild for Getting Lost
When my dad had a stroke in June, and another in July, I didn’t dream about him much. Not that this was new: my dreams tend to follow my location and my life. When I moved to Missoula, Montana (my first “big” city) and especially the Bay Area, my dreams shifted to urban landscapes. My unconscious created all kinds of cityscapes, not the Bay, not Missoula, but always concreate and glass mazes filled with people. Sometimes fun, sometimes terrifying. Before, my dreamscapes were always pastoral or rural, and often in my childhood home in Enumclaw, WA.
Because the last year has been filled with the wonder of having a child, and my parent’s live so far away, they weren’t entering into my dreams much.
But after my dad’s second stroke in July, when he could no longer swallow, or talk, or get out of his hospital bed, I had three dreams about him. In the first, we were at a strange relative’s house. Somewhat similar to my wife Molly’s parent’s home, with the livingroom being right at the entrance, the kitchen and other rooms behind. Molly and Liam and I were there, looking at all the bric-a-brac of a working-class house, ready to make small talk with a relative, when my dad walked in. He had a cane, and his speech was slurred, but he was more or less OK. How he might have been if he hadn’t had a second stroke. Seeing my look of wonder, he said:
“What? I’m all right. Stroke kind numbed my mouth up, but I’m OK, Leonard.”
I was so relieved, and thrilled, that my two months of worry and pain evaporated. I hugged him carefully. Then the dream ended, and I woke up.
In the next, my brother, or my sister-in-law, had graduated from college. It was doubly odd, because my sister-in-law did graduate from medical school, and my brother has no plans to go to college. Plus, it was like a drive-through ceremony, and the attendees would all park in a big line to see the stage. Somehow, my family found actual seats near the front of some limited-space section, and again, my father arrived with a cane and stuttering speech. This time, I thought of how hard he had it, and tried to help him sit, make him comfortable. I was still elated he was alive. As a family, we waited for the mundanity of another graduation ceremony, of my brother to have his brief moment on the stage.
The last dream took away the surprise and revelation. It was as if he hadn’t had a stroke. We were at my parent’s house, sitting at the kitchen island, having drink, talking about anything and everything. It was so like every past visit, back to the time I still lived at home in high school, that there was no surprise my dad was OK. No cane, no stutter, no slur. Just my dad.
That last dream made me realize that the mundane, the quotidian, the visit, is what life is all about, and mostly made up of. In the moment, we hardly taken notice of it. But when its gone, it’s all you want back.
Leonard Crosby 