Tag: children

Destiny

Brooding with leftover anger and resentment, he stared at the page, unable to read.

The book, by Lee Child (a Christmas present), was a thriller (which he usually enjoyed), but an argument was displacing his attention. It’d been a stupid argument, not worth even recounting, but it was another in a string of stupid, exhausting arguments. One a day? Hell, on a good day, it’d be one a day. Most days, there was one in the morning before they left for work and another in the evening. They were part of the routines.

He was tired of that routine. He decided that if he could, he would change his life so that he and his wife had never reconciled after they’d separated. That had happened less than nine months in (nine years ago). His life would be so much more pleasant, wouldn’t it? Her, and her attitude. It infuriated him.

Maybe, instead, it would be better they hadn’t had children. Much had changed when she’d become pregnant. The pressure to succeed, save money, and everything else, had ratcheted up, becoming relentless. Besides, they hadn’t been getting along well before that point.

He loved his children, though, although they worried and wearied him. A friend said that having children was all about the three Ws: worrying, wearying, and weaning. That sounded right.

Maybe, instead of not reconciling, he would not marry his wife. Then there would be no children. He tried imagining that life. He’d be like Grover, alone on holidays (and declaring that he liked it most times, but also decrying it on other days), but doing whatever he wanted, whenever. But he’d asked her to marry him because he loved her. Probably be better then, to have never met her. But if he’d never met her, would he have ever met anyone and fallen in love? (What an expression.) Yes, he had other girlfriends. He’d been popular.

Setting his book aside to watch football on television for a moment, he waited for some spirits to show up, someone to tell him how different his life would be if he’d never met his wife and married. That sort of tale had been written to death. Hadn’t there been movies with that theme? He waited for the television screen to change to a movie where he was the star and the plot was that he’d never met his wife and married. But that would’ve required many other changes, since he’d met her in high school as freshmen.

He had to consider all that would’ve all changed to keep them from meeting. One of them would not have been in that school (or maybe just not that year) (but both were good students), or their activities, likes and interests would’ve needed to change. He tried peering into the past to see what needed to shift to stop their meeting from happening. Maybe they met but didn’t fall in love. That’d seemed instant for both of them, like destiny.

Wiping her hands with a dish rag, she stepped into the room. “Kitchen’s clean.”

“Good.” He heard the dishwasher running.

“Are you hungry? Can I make you a sandwich?”

“Okay, sure, thanks.”

She smiled. “Want a beer?”

“Okay.”

“Anything else?”

“No, thanks, that’d be good.”

She glanced at the screen. “Who’s winning?”

“Titans, third quarter.”

“That’s not who you wan to win is it?”

“No.”

“Well, there’s still time for it to change.” Smiling again, she turned and left the room.

One child hit the other. A scream erupted. He leaped up, refereeing, consoling, explaining, parenting. A few minutes later, detente achieved, he sat down with a slow exhale and looked at the television. The third quarter was almost over but the score hadn’t changed. He picked up his book. He couldn’t remember where he’d stopped reading, what was happening, or what he’d been thinking about.

Turning the page back, he began reading again.

 

 

3

The Chicken Bone Dream

The chicken bone dream had much more in it.

To begin, naked but dressing, I was concerned with a chicken bone traveling through my body.

My wife was with me. She was preparing to leave for work or somewhere. We lived in this huge, modern white house. Most of the dream took place in garage. The garage was spotless, with a glistening white floor. Multiple high-end cars were parked in it. Most were white but one car was a black BMW five series, a large car. A child was sitting in the car’s trunk, eating a bowl of cereal. The child was about nine and dressed in a blue school uniform.

He wasn’t my child. I told my wife, “You can’t let him stay there. That’s a car trunk.”

She replied, “That’s fine, he does it all the time. They both do.”

When she said that, I saw that there was a blonde boy, the same age, in a green school uniform, eating cereal in the back end of a white car.

I had to leave so I dismissed it. The chicken bone in me was distracting me. First, I was thinking, “There’s something in me. It’s going down through me. What is it?”

Feeling along my body with my finger tips, I focused on my abdomen. I realized that I thought I felt a chicken bone.

As I continued preparing to dress and leave because time was growing short, I struggled to understand how a chicken bone came to be in my and how it was going to come out. I decided that I must’ve been eating a chicken leg, and I’d swallowed the bone. Now it was working through my system.

Believing that, I felt along my body with my fingers. Yes, I could discern what seemed to be the joint end of the bone. It was working down through my body. As it worked down, I kept feeling it. More of the bone was clearly discernible. Soon, it was clearly a chicken leg bone. I wasn’t panicked but I was worried about how this was going to come out of me. For some reason, I thought that it was going to exit via my penis. My skin had become very elastic at that point, so the thought of a chicken bone passing through my pecker was amusing.

Others came, dressed in tuxedos with black ties, or sparkling white evening gowns, asking, “Are you ready yet? Aren’t you dressed? We’re going to be late.”

I told them about the chicken bone coming out. They waved that off. “Don’t worry about that. Come on.”

I grabbed my tux and was putting it on as I went up the stairs in my white house to leave. The dream ended by fading out to Sid Vicious singing his punk version of “My Way”. As I awoke, choruses from “Best Day of My Life” by America Authors popped in.

I awoke feeling great.

0

The Flaw

Going through the morning’s triple S activities – shit, shower, shave – he was thinking about his parents and their health. They’d divorced when he was a little boy. Each had contributed to that mess, he decided while conducting his retrospective. Mom forced issues and seemed to thrive on confrontation. Dad shunned conflict. Throwing himself into work, he’d held several jobs simultaneously. He did each well, and they paid well.

After their divorce, Mom had remarried six or seven times – he wasn’t sure – and Dad had several live-in girlfriends besides two other marriages. He thought it was remarkable that he’d married and managed to keep it together for over forty years.

Of course, he’d never been close to his parents. Splitting time between Mom and Dad’s households, he’d struck out on his own after graduating high school when he was seventeen, and then married at eighteen. Neither parent had made an effort to stay very close outside of birthday and holiday cards. Mom visited him and his wife one time, after he’d bought the round-trip airline ticket for her, after they’d been married thirty years. Dad had visited once, dropping by their first apartment for a grinning, goofy fifteen minute visit. Two visits between the two parents in more than forty years.

He sighed. Both parents, in their eighties, were in declining health. He knew he’d miss them once they passed away – everyone told him so – but it was hard for him to generate compassion for their situation.

He hated that he had that flaw and couldn’t seem to do anything about it.

2

A Writing Class Dream

Three classes were taking place in a large, modern building that reminded me of an egg because it had curved, white ceilings. I looked like I was twenty years old in this dream (I’m sixty-two and a half), and was in the advanced class. We’d finished our lessons. I was pleased by everything that’d happened. Now, I was basically waiting to leave and employ my new knowledge.

For some reason, I couldn’t leave just yet, so I went around exploring the other classes. Not too large, one class seemed to be people in their mid-teens. Walking among them, I noticed that they were writing letters, using pens. All of them had small computers with strange, springy raspberry, lemon, and lime-colored thin wires that dangled down. Checking, I found that they weren’t connected to anything. I asked one if they needed to be connected. She said, “Don’t worry, they’ll come and do it in a little while.”

 I went on. The next class was larger and filled with children. They were waiting for someone to give them their notebooks. Seeing a stack of notebooks, I passed them out to them, and then decided to join them. Taking one notebook, I opened it and saw that it’d already been written in. Every page had sentences, paragraphs, descriptions, or stories.

I checked other notebooks. They were written in, too. I said, “These notebooks are all written in.”

A child beside me nodded. “Yes, you just write some more. Just write around them.”

I was thinking that over when another child said, “Everything is already written but that shouldn’t stop you from writing.”

The dream ended.

0

Forgotten

Watching the mothers watching their children playing, he said, “I often forget that adults learn to be parents as they go, and that every child, every day with a child, is another test.

“Some parents never learn how to do it.”

0

Wishes

He stepped aside to let a woman pushing a shopping cart go by. A young girl in the cart’s child seat said, “Mom, while I ever be big enough that I don’t have to ride in the cart.”

Mom replied, “Yes, you’ll be big enough sooner than you think.”

The man said, “I wish I could get in a cart and ride around.”

The woman laughed. “Yes, I would love to be in a cart and have someone push me around.”

As the adults laughed, the child stared at them. Then the man rounded the corner. Encountering a woman in a wheelchair, he began re-thinking his wish.

6

Three Brief Dreams, One Night

The first dream was simple and peculiar. I was with male friends from different times of my life, but we were all young adults, regardless of how old I was or they were when I knew them. I think there were a dozen of us. All were people I haven’t seen in years. Some of them have died.

We were playing a game in the living that required us to bounce off the walls. I was watching, though, trying to remember the game’s name and the rules. One friend went into the kitchen. I went after him to ask questions, but the dream was interrupted, and that’s where it stopped.

My second dream was about land, property, and building. My wife and I had bought some property. The deal was set in motion, but was incomplete.

Visiting our property prior to taking possession, a sort of wooded country place of several acres and buildings, we encountered a group of young teenagers with a pile of remotes. They were taking turns hurling remotes at trees and rocks to break the remotes, an activity that fed giddy laughter. Talking to them about it, a smiling girl said that her father encouraged them to break the remotes like this to relieve stress and tension. Feeling that we could use a release, my wife and I threw some remotes and concluded, it is a great way to relieve stress. Meanwhile, I wondered how they’d collected so many remotes.

We went into a small house that was part of our new property. A balding, stocky man and several teenagers were busy working on it inside. An old building with white walls, tall, traditional windows made it a light and airy place. I somehow know that the layout was different than it had been. The man working on the place confirmed it, explaining what had been where and how they’d been moved. As he talked, I said, “That’s right, you’re the original building.” He confirmed that, but I knew that he wasn’t the person who sold us the property. He confirmed that, too, telling me that he’d been hired.

Then I remembered his name was Was, but then questioned myself on the spelling. Was it Was, Waas, or Wass?

In the third dream, I was flying in an aircraft. It seemed like it was an advanced technology. It lacked wings and was quietly traveling fast and high above a planet.

I thought the planet was Earth, but I wasn’t sure, and was collecting details in search of verification. A bright yellow-white sun shone in a blue sky. Only a few sketchy, high cirrus clouds marred the sky’s impeccable blue. The ground below was mostly sandy brown and flat with green and dark blue patches that sometimes looked black. I took the dark blue/black patches to be lakes or puddles. A haze-filled horizon seemed to veil mountains.

I tried understanding which way we were traveling, and the sun’s path, as a way to verify it was Earth. Therein was an interesting duality. I was in the dream with friends (although they’re nobody that I know from this life), discussing our plans (we were on a mission to find other people), but I was also aware that I was in the dream and was trying to understand the dream.

That’s where it ended.

0

A Dream Series

I would dream, awaken, and think, and then return to the dream. The dream series had so much detail, it was like immersive virtual reality. To capture it all would require hours of thinking and writing, so I give this sparse version.

The dream sequence began with me as an adult being invited into a special program. In the dream, I had the ability to see patterns and intuitively meld data, at times doing so as fast as people say, “Hello.” I can’t claim to understand the talent completely; it permitted me to almost instantly know people’s name and history. People were in awe of it.

The special program was an experiment in three phases. First, an operation. Second, a test of complex data to evaluate results. Third, to let me out and see what happens.

The place was an old medical office building now used as a school. The halls were tall, crowded and narrow. There were many small rooms, and the sheer density of teachers and students created havoc trying to get around. I arrived looking slovenly, joking with them, pleased to be invited, and not at all intimidated. There had been one person like me who’d gone through the program. His name was Carrie. He’d done it decades before, before anyone was even sure what he was.

Put into a small, crowded bedroom also used as an office, I demonstrated my initial skills. The project members were amazed. I’d been through this before with others. People were always dubious of my skills and wanted demonstrations. They thought the data and situation was extremely complex but it was amazingly simple to me. My time for going through it was less than a few seconds. It was slow by my standards. I bragged that to them.

We agreed to go through with the operation.

The operation seemed to involve crunching down on my thumb nail hard with something that looked like a wired hole-punch. Two tall white guys, young and casually dressed, did the operation. It went off as specified but the results afterward weren’t overly impressive. Yes, I had an improvement in my ability to intuitively gather and analyze data, but the scale didn’t increase as much as we’d expected. I was disappointed, and so were the program administrators.

Another thumb punch was proposed and accepted. They found another place on my thumb nail and punched.

I felt stunned, both connected to the world and released to be outside of it. I could see the data in a way I never had, but I was exhausted and in pain. Bent over, holding my thumb, I crashed to the floor.

I awoke in the same room, but in a white hospital gown. I remained desperately enervated and in pain. I wanted to sleep. They told me that I’d been working in my sleep. They were amazed. I had no knowledge of it. I wanted to sleep  more.

I also wanted to know what was different about the second operation from the first. It had seemed exactly the same, only administered in a different location. The two male ‘operators’ wanted to talk about it, and began by explaining that they’d probably just found a sweet spot, but the administrators didn’t want them disturbing me. Everyone was whisked out of my room.

I slept again, but then, half-awake, felt the need to leave the room. No logic supported my desire. I just needed to go. The door was partway open; I went through. On the other side were the administrators and operators, along with other people. They argued about whether I should be let out, but decided that if that’s what I wanted to do, they shouldn’t stop me.

I left. My thumb ached. I held it out to one side and coped with its pain.

The rooms and halls were packed with children. Male and female were there. Most were between eight and thirteen years old. None were poor but all seemed dressed in a style I associate with middle-class America. White children dominated but there was a wide variety of ethnicities present.

The children didn’t know who I was, but they thought I was the guy, the special guest. They were too awed of me to speak with me. They became silent wherever I went, watching me as I went by them, through rooms, and up and down steps and halls. I noticed one child because he seemed different. Black, he had a narrow face, a tall, poofy afro, and wide solemn eyes. I saw him several more times, and sought reasons for why I was seeing him so frequently. Others spoke about him by name. I engaged in the conversation, and then decided to look for him.

I began walking around again. I was often noticed because I remained in my white hospital gowns. I didn’t like that, so I stopped off and changed clothing into my usual style. Then I resumed roaming.

Bulletin boards filled with photographs were on some hall walls. I stopped to look at them sometimes. The boards had hundreds of photographs of individuals and groups. Nothing was labeled but looking at the photos, I knew who people were.

One board had a small black and white photograph of the great Carrie. He wore a straw hat and appeared to be in an Hawaiian shirt. There were several photographs of me when I was younger. I didn’t know where they’d gotten them.

I kept roaming the building through crowds of students and rooms of teachers. Picking up data, I realized the projects full scope was to analyze the group patterns and assess and predict who would be successful. I knew I could do this. The more I walked, the more I learned. As I learned, I realized the children and teachers were arranged in a pattern.

Squatting against a wall, I paused to rest and think. This crowd of children weren’t sure of who I was. They mostly ignored me. But then an administrator entered. She walked around with internal mail. Calling my name, she passed me a thin folder. “Nine comments,” she said. “Impressive.”

I studied the comments. They were complimentary but not helpful. I resumed walking around. I thought about the black kid again.

I entered a room. Children were lying on the floor on their backs. I stood by the entrance, looking at them. One boy beside me kicked me in the leg.

I was furious. I grabbed his shirt and pulled him to his feet, asking the others who he was. He was unapologetic, unafraid and indifferent to me. He wouldn’t talk.

Ten years old, he was white, slender with a thick bush of black hair and dark eyes. He wore blue jeans and a sweater. I wanted to know his name, demanding it off of the other children present. I was angry that he’d kicked me, but there was more.

I couldn’t get anything off him.

He was outside the data. That was how I’d begun, I realized, as a person outside of the norms.

The dreams ended.

 

0

Omichi Dream

I don’t know what omichi means. I dreamed of it, though, using it myself throughout the dream, and spelled it for others’ edification during the dream.

Succinctly, I was in school. I was by far the oldest student. I didn’t see or hear of any teachers, professors, or instructors. What I remember is that the other students were teenagers or younger. They were rude, and they deliberately ignored me even as they sometimes discussed me. It vexed me that I would attempt to explain things to them, and they wouldn’t hear – or pretend to not hear – and go on, even as my explanations would help them. Kids, right.

One particular problem or issue was bothering many of them. That’s when omichi struck me as an idea. “You can use omichi,” I told them, spelling it. “Use omichi.” I spelled it, and then explained what it was, apparently showing them a small device that eludes description for me.

I was ignored. Exasperated, I tried leaving the place and found I couldn’t. The next best thing of the activities available was to sleep and wait. Finding a place on a white concrete bench, I stripped down, tucked my items around me, and attempted to sleep. I experienced mixed results. Despite sunshine, it was cold. The kids made too much noise, and again, would come up and start talking about me like I was there, but inorganic, which infuriated me.

Then, they became worried: someone was missing, or could be missing. They weren’t sure. Hearing of the problem, I rose and told them while dressing, “You can use the omichi. Set up the omichi as a spiral system to notify one another.”

Silence met this suggestion. I give up, I decided. As I decided that, a young boy said, “We can use the omichi.”

I turned on him. “That’s what I just said. Set it up as a spiral system.”

The boy, about eleven, white with brown hair and glasses, wearing a green striped shirt and pale shorts, said, “Set it up as a spiral system.”

They decided that’s what they would do, leaving me flabbergasted and dejected, which is how the dream ended.

2

Dreams of Saving Babies

Oddly, I enjoyed two variations of the same dream last night.

Each began with me driving a car. In the first, a man, who I think was Latino, began shouting and waving. Looking back, I saw a baby stroller with a child in it racing down the highway toward me. Changing speed and course, I dropped back until the stroller caught up with me, matched speed, and snagged the stroller handle through the window. After bringing us both to a stop, I put my hazard lights on and began waving at the oncoming traffic in warning while I awaited the parents(s).

In the next part of the dream, I saved a child again. This time, I was walking with friends through a plaza, when a child fell out of a window. Seeing what was happening, I managed to catch the child and return her unharmed to her mother. I then remarked to my friends, “That’s the second child I saved today.” They tried convincing me it was a dream as I told them, “No, it was real.”

Then, as the second feature on this dream night, I was walking through a department store. I was wearing brown leather sandals, but somehow misplaced them. Most of the rest of the dream was about looking for the sandals, explaining to others that I’d lost them and what they looked like, and looking at other sandals to see if they might be mine.

I then returned to saving babies. Again, I was driving. A child in an unattended stroller rolled toward traffic. Seeing it, I maneuvered my car to protect the stroller from other cars and then herd it to a stop. Then, I was walking with friends through a plaza when I saw a child about to plummet over the edge of walkway. Racing over, I caught her before she fell. After returning the child to her grateful mother, I told my friends, “That’s the fourth child I’ve saved today.” As they protested that I’d dreamed it, I realized it was true; I’d twice dreamed I’d saved two children.

And then, I awoke.

2

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