What Dreams May...Come?

Last night, I had some pretty funktastic dreams, even by my standards (which is saying something as I rank pretty high in the arena of Weird Dreams).

Initially, it was a dream in which I'd thrown a massive party at my maternal grandmother's house with some friends and my relatives from the maternal and paternal side of the family.  Everyone, and I mean everyone, was there.  I walked through, greeting, hugging, kissing everyone. Even the deceased, who, mercifully, did not show up looking deceased, but looked instead rather rosy and robust and dressed up and quite happy.  A great aunt asked me for a vodka and tonic so I went to the liquor cabinet and made one for her.  She was delighted.  I kept telling everyone to eat, drink, help themselves, taking photos, arranging group shots, etc..  I was really pleased and felt quite in my element with the whole affair, as though I'd pulled off something quite grand and wonderful.  (Apart from my grandmother's dining room, which, even in the dream, stank woefully of cat urine as it sadly did in real life, decades ago.)

I kept peeking into these little details from my very far flung childhood - the pantry with its sliding serving window, painted a deep green, an array of Cutex nail polish bottles with fluted tops, the endless stash of Final Net hairspray, the Ponds Angel Face powder - all still there, delighting me to no end.

When I emerged one last time, the party was over - shadow boxes and photos had been hung on the walls to commemorate the event, corsages and cocktail napkins tucked into the boxes, photos ringed with marks from wet drinks , smiling, laughing faces showing the best part of us all.

I peered into a room to find my brother, a friend (entirely unrelated to us, and so, out of place but in my sleeping mind it seemed completely natural she would be there) and an errant, distant relative or two milling around, looking embarrassed.  I asked what the matter was, and my brother told me the entire thing had been lame.  My mother appeared and told me I really should have planned better.  My friend patted my arm and asked why I was upset, did I not KNOW it was lame?  Or was it that nobody had told me while it was going on so I could have done something about it?  No, I didn't now and YES that would have been helpful - and then I was sitting on a chair looking up at the smiling photos and remembering my great aunt being so happy with her vodka tonic and asked them was it because I hadn't served alcohol, primarily?  My brother and mother said yes; my friend patted my arm again and said "Next time you'll know", and I wept because even dreaming, I knew how unlikely it would ever be to have that assemblage of people together again and pull off a large scale event like that.

Fade to a house which was mine, in the way dream homes often are familiar to our sleeping selves, but not reflective of my actual home.

Robin Williams - oh, Robin, my favorite - is in the den, sitting on a sofa, looking deeply glum and faded.   I have "won" time with him - per my public assertion that if I could spend time with any celebrity, living or dead, it would be him -  and he has come to my home to honor this .  He is spending a weekend with me but is very much alive ... though his spirit is greatly dampened.  He is an incredibly tamped down version of himself, and profoundly sad.   I'm not sure I'm quite an adult at this time, and feel much more like 17, but the children make appearances so it's hard to tell - dreams, hey? - and I'm so unsure of myself.

I'm excited that he's there but I want him to enjoy the time and I keep trying to find ways to please him.  He is only faintly amused by the antics of my children, smiling tightly.  I ask what I can get for him / do for him and he waves his hand and shakes his head at me, dismissively.  I apologize for not being able to make things better having him come all this way to be with me and he cocks his head and says, rather sagely, you didn't make me come, I wasn't forced, I wanted to.  I sit with him.  I ply him with compliments. He asks me what it's all for at the end of the day.  I tell him kindness and love and compassion are all that matter.  He smiles sadly, nods and reaches for me.  I sit on his lap and hug him. I ask if he would like some scrambled eggs and he brightens for the first time and says yes.  I jump up, delighted that he will let me do this for him.

Inexplicably, I race to the grill outside on a raised deck, and ask the children to ask their grandmother to get me the square grill pan with the wooden handle.  (The pan, I have; the raised deck, I do not.)  Nobody can find it.  Robin comes outside and asks me if I'd like to get going, so we head out together.  He holds my hand.

We walk down cobbled streets, rather more like English villages than Nantucket, through heavily shaded alleys, and find ourselves at the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney World, only it looks more like a dive bar in a shanty town.  We go inside and there are pirates and devils and everyone else in line with us proceeds through multiple doors to the inner chamber.  I take off a long scarf I'm wearing and tie it round my head to resemble a pirate's head scarf.  He smiles, takes an end of the scarf and wraps it around his head too.  We are almost physically connected.  Everyone lines up on opposite sides of the room, facing each other The lights dim and flare, there is a horrible sound and terrible smell and the floor begins to buckle and roll and wave under our feet.  Fire erupts at the far end of the room.  I am terrified but I keep telling myself it's a Disney ride and it can't be that bad.  After a minute, he tells me he is feeling terribly seasick and needs to leave.  I'm relieved.  We exit together and find ourselves in a leafy street at dusk.  Buses are passing at a nearby intersection, and I hear the jangle of a trolley bell.

He asks whether I'd like to go to Disneyland instead, and I say sure, and we catch the trolley together.  Instead of Disneyland, we go home.  He pats his lap and I sit on it again, facing him. He says he had a good day, but tomorrow he will have to return.  I nod and tell him I know.  He reaches for me tenderly, wrapping his hand around the back of my neck and pulling me in for a kiss.  *Note.  I have not had such thoughts of him in waking life, but in the dream it seems entirely reasonable, logical, inevitable. We engage in furious...er... congress.

Afterwards, we sleep next to each other on the floor.  It is safe, warm, quiet, still.  In the dark, I reach out and while I cannot feel him, I know he is there.

When I awaken, tears have slid from my eyes onto my pillow.