Exhausting and Confusing

Some nights are just exhausting.  Exhausting and confusing.

Last night I dreamed that I was back in the car with my Pop on our long car trip.  In the dream I looked down at myself and thought, “What the hell!  I can’t be naked with my dad!”  I got out of bed and put on a t-shirt and got back in bed and fell asleep.

Sometime later I woke up overheated and thought, “What the hell!  Why am I wearing a shirt?”  Took it off and tossed it to the foot of the bed.

Ok, that’s odd enough.  I’ve never been a sleepwalker, let alone a sleep dresser.  But, here’s what’s even weirder: I did the whole thing AGAIN.  Dreamed the same dream, reached down to the foot of the bed and dragged the shirt over my head and fell back asleep.  Woke yet again and thought, “Why is this shirt back on?!”  Took it off and put it under my pillow.

I’m not feeling especially well rested today.

Dreams

My dreams have been mostly of loss lately.  Whether the subject be my mother or someone else, or things, or intangibles, the theme has been loss.

Yesterday I had these dreams.

The first one featured my mum.  She and my dad and I were sitting in a living room, the two of them on the couch.  We were all chatting and at one point I realized that, Hey!  Mum is back!  And her brain is working perfectly!  After that, once it became apparent that I was dreaming, the dream ended.  I can’t remember what we were talking about, unfortunately.

In the second dream, I was in some kind of tricky situation where I needed to escape from someone.  I don’t remember that part of the dream.  It was out in the country, in a rural upland.  There were poorly developed roads – maybe dirt, maybe gravel – with trees and shrubs growing right up to the roadway.  I was driving a sedan.  It was summer and I had the window open.  I crested a slight rise and looked out over a wide valley.  What I didn’t realize was that the road turned sharply to the left, but I didn’t.  The car went soaring through the air and nosedived into a lake.  The water was very green.  As the car was flying through the air I saw what was happening and many thoughts flashed through my head about how to survive the situation.  I couldn’t remember if the window should be up or down.  I took a deep breath.

The car hit the water and plummeted like a stone, like a steel coffin.  I freed myself from behind the wheel and struggled my way out of the window.  There were bubbles everywhere.  Green water and bubbles.  I kicked my way to the surface of the water.  As I came up for air, I saw that I was not far from the shore.  I swam a few strokes and found myself standing on an underwater ledge.  I looked back at the car and saw that it was now on the ledge as well.  My thought was, ‘at least it won’t be too hard to get it out of there.’

That’s all I remember.  A strange night's sleep, for sure.

Random

I had a dream last night, or rather very early this morning. It was quite vivid, cinematic. It began suddenly, as if I dropped into a dream that was already happening, or into someone else’s dream.

In the dream, Zoe and I were driving. Well, Zoe was driving and I dropped into the passenger seat. It was dusk, and night was quickly darkening the sky. We were in the wide open west, traveling across a vast valley with dark mountains towering in the distance.

As we drove, lights came on in clusters far away from the highway. We were headed to a mountain pass through which we could just see the fading light of sunset. There was a sense of urgency in our journey, but where we were going I can’t say.

We approached the pass. Lights from houses were visible but did not illuminate their surroundings. They served as decorations to the highway, sparkling signposts with no direction. We began the climb to the summit. I could hear the engine and feel the vibration shift in the car. We wound back and forth across the face of the slope, nearer and nearer to the top.

I don’t know what was beyond the pass because, as it often happens in dreams, I awoke before reaching either the top or a conclusion. While it’s frustrating not to see the end of a story, I felt good about the dream. I felt as if I had spent time with Zoe. Her presence is so familiar, her energy so constant and reliable.

Zoe has a remarkable ability to direct her dreams. I am going to try to do so tonight, so that I can see where we are headed. I mean that literally and metaphorically. I want so much for my daughter; sometimes it seems that I want more for her than she does.

Her happiness is important to me. I realize that at age 25 her life is hers to manage. Oh! If only I had a magic wand and the perfect spells to cast! The things I would change! Voila, no more bad boyfriend! Poof, back in the Pacific Northwest! Zap, back in college!

One of the hardest things about being a parent is letting go. I've had to do so and there have been agonizing times to live through. My life is no success story which gives me the experience to say, "You don't need to go through this." But, apparently, there are lessons that must be learned first hand and slowly (painfully so from my perspective).

I miss my daughter every single day.