My daughter texted me today to ask me when she had her measles vaccination. She will be 43 this year so it was a long time ago. Except that in old age, distant events sometimes feel more recent than last year. A trick of time and memory that lends a vividness to long ago.
I dream about a little boy and in associating to it in an effort to reveal and understand what my psyche is telling me about my life today, I have a very vivid memory of walking with my son when he was 3. I can feel his hand in mine as we walk along the street and I can almost hear his stream of commentary about things he sees. Yet that day was forty years ago.
In another dream I see my grandmother’s kitchen, a room I have not seen in more than sixty years.
How can it be almost 20 years since that Fourth of July weekend when I flew to Detroit to meet the man I am now married to? A vivid image of the fireworks I could see from the window of the plane as I flew back to Maine and feeling they were for me, celebrating what I felt after that wonderful weekend.
Another dream: Pauline sends me a suitcase with gifts for me and another person important to us. Sent from beyond perhaps as she is dead.
People long dead. Places I have not seen in decades. My little boy with a little girl of his own now. My daughter who posts pictures of dinner parties she throws.
I am almost 73 now. I look in the mirror and see an old woman. My dreams bring me myself as a girl. A young mother. And I am aware of the reality that the time left to me is steadily shrinking. Even as it stretches backward, I feel time speeding by rapidly.
It is spring. The lilacs have nubbins of greenleavesnow. The maples have swelling buds. Tulips and daffodils up in the garden. My town has a project to plant a million daffodils all over town, 100,000 per year. Nine more years to go. I wonder if I will be here to see them all.
Take a look if you will at the post, Dream Time, by my Twitter friend, Martha Crawford. You will be glad you did.
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