But sometimes,
We remember our bedrooms and our parent’s bedrooms
and the bedrooms of our friends
Then we think of our parents…
Well, whatever happened to them?! – arcade fire

I awoke from a terribly normal dream this morning. In it I was lying in bed awake in a second story bedroom I used to have as a child. The room was lit by the orange glow of an elevated street lamp. A highway passed behind our house right at my bedroom level only hidden by a small thicket of scraggly bush and stunted trees. Outside an open window, a strong breeze carried warm summer air twisting around the room. I could hear the hiss of leaves rise and fall with the speed of the wind. An old silver maple swayed just feet from my window. I got out of bed and hung my head out the open pane. I could see the grass dancing in circular patterns below me under the soft spotlight of the street lamps. At moments when the highway was silent and the wind would abate, I could just slightly pick up the distant sounds of the river spilling through the shallow rocky terrain below the high steel bridge. The house is gone now. It was removed to give clearance to a new highway and an even higher steel bridge.I don’t really long for the past. I don’t have “glory days”. I’ve always felt as if tomorrow will be better than today. Sometimes I have to give it a little help though. And if truth be told, even then, tomorrow does not always live up to expectations. But all in all forward is better than back. I don’t know if it’s a motto, a credo, or just the result of an often shaky past, but I’m always gazing with fondness on things to come.

When I wake up from those “little moments” dreams I do feel loss though. Not for the time or the place, but for the sound of the wind, the summer’s night air, the smell of wet dirt, distant lightning or the helicopter seeds of a silver maple dropping to the earth below me.

I remember dreaming once that I had traveled to Ireland. There was a small town whose streets ended right on a small rocky protected beach. I can remember old rusty trash cans lined up right at the end of each little dead end street in my view. The clouds were heavy and the air tasted of rain. I saw a little blond girl running up to join her parents who were slowly walking up the beach toward town. I thought to myself, yeah, it’s about time I go explore the the place a bit. I took maybe two steps toward the little town, then I woke up. I remember feeling depressed all that day. I would have loved to not to have woke up from that one. I was tempted to get a plane ticket and go on a search for that little beach. But in the end I put on my degrading restaurant uniform and went off to work in Wisconsin Dells.

Odd the memories that cling. It’s a good thing that the past is the past. At least I feel that way at the moment. Today is pretty nice too. I’m cool with it. Barring all the little strifes of daily existence, life is good. And life after all is exactly like where you are right now. But I still dream, and sometimes I wish I could spend a little more time with my head stuck out the window on a breezy summer evening. I don’t think I’d even mind if in my dream, the neighbor’s dog barked. Well, not too loud though.

-d

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