dreaming

It is early, 6:30 but it feels like 5:30 because the darkness still sits so heavy under an overcast sky. I awoke half an hour ago to the deepest dream which I must document, I am so curious to see whether it will come true in some form.

Joanna is one of my dearest friends, and she is now 8 days past due for her first baby. Oh, and the story is long, we'll sum it up to say this baby is so long awaited for and anticipated, and I am hoping beyond all of my dearest hopes that everything goes beautifully and smoothly for her.

So it has not been unusual for me to dream what happens. The other day I wondered about Joanna, and I thought, she could be having her baby right now. But then I reconsidered, somehow. No, I decided, I will dream of it when the baby comes. Here is what happened, just now in my head, whirling and fresh from the night's sleep.

I am in a kitchen somewhere with my friend Beth and our children. It is a strange, bluey-green color and full of light. We are working on a project and there are cardboard boxes everywhere. Our children are there, but occupied. The phone rings, and it is Joanna. Beth answers, and at first, their conversation is simply normal: then I hear Beth say something about her having a girl. I grab the phone.

Hello?

Of course the exact dialogue is lost to me, but I hear this: Remember the day you said would be a good day?

Yes, I remember. October 9th, and in real life I had said this to Joanna, that many wonderful people that I know have this as a birthday, the ninth of October.

Well, she says, At four o'clock this morning I looked down and pushed out the little head of Leigh."

A girl? Here? Named Leigh? But I hadn't heard quite right. What's her name?

DuFris, she answers, which of course rhymes with Leigh and is a rather strange name for a little girl, I am thinking, but I exclaim, Oh, that's beautiful!

This huge gush of relief flows over me, and I can hardly believe it's true.

Scene Two- In the car

As these things often do, suddenly I am somewhere else, in the backseat of a car driving alongside a lake. The driver is a woman who used to teach fifth grade at the school I was at, the passenger her son, and the other two passengers are other teachers (all people I worked with when I had Charlotte). I am in the back right seat. The people in the back with me keep falling asleep, and out of the corner of my eye, when I see them dozing, I mistakenly think they are the drivers and begin to panic. This happens several times.
Suddenly, we pull out into a wide plain, which is edged with steep little mountains. It's a wildlife preserve, and there are hyenas, wildebeasts, monkeys, rhinos. All in wide, fenced in pens. I wonder if my children would enjoy this. Suddenly I remember Joanna, and I turn to the little girl who is suddenly on my lap.

She is a five year old, blonde girl. She is on my lap, looking out the window, and my arms are tightly around her waist. In the dream, she is Joanna's daughter. I have to confirm with her, I can hardly beleive that this good news is true.

"Did your mama have her baby?" I ask. The little girl nods. I ask what her name is, hoping to confirm or clear up the strange name I think I have heard over the phone.

"She has to do the stone now" says the little girl.
In my mind, I am picturing a small little rock, and Joanna or a person scratching in the stone with another rock, making a brief little etching.

"What is the stone?" I ask.

"It's the stone where they put her name, because she's not dead."

This makes sense to me in the dream, and I have this picture of the family scratching the baby's name on this rock and adding it to a circle of rocks in their backyard, a ritual of life that has been completed.

I emerge from the dream. Three things swirl in my mind.

The baby is here.

The baby is alive.

Who is the little girl who brought me that dream?

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I am so curious to see what today brings, if I will indeed get news about my dear friend's baby. And as my children are still asleep (!!!6:42!) I will go on to tell about another dream that once woke me.

My dear friend Katia was pregnant, and I woke at 5:40 one January morning remembering that she had called me in my dream to say she had given birth to a baby boy, named McCall. I got out of bed to go to the bathroom, thinking of McCall and baby boys and then returned to sleep.

As I slept, then, I dreamed that I saw her, and I told her about my dream and the baby boy named McCall.

I did have my baby, she said, but it's not a boy. It's a little girl, and I've named her Aster.

I woke up, corrected. I puzzled over the two names my brain had invented. McCall, and then Aster. Aster was almost pretty, I thought of the little flowers in the fall with that name and I looked it up in the dictionary; the greek word for star.

One hour later I couldn't wait any longer. I picked up the phone and called Katia.

Her sister answered the phone. Katia was in the hospital. At 6:00 that morning, she had given birth to a little girl, and named her Stella. The latin word for Star.

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Less than a month ago, I dreamed that I ran into an old friend. Our friendship fell apart when Charlotte died, sadly. I felt unsupported, she had crises of her own, and somehow it dissolved: she is literally the only good friend I have ever fallen out of touch with. Getting back in touch seems awkward; so much time has passed, the emotions aren't hot anymore but so much of my life has gone by and changed. She now lives in Colorado. So my dream is this:

I am walking down the street, and I bump into Chandra. Literally.

I don't know what to say, I tell her. I don't know what to say.

I'm thinking, do I say, are you mad at me? What happened? Can we talk? Let's try again? But I don't know where to start.

I wake up and later that day call a mutual friend and tell her of my dream. I really don't know what I'd say, I tell her.

Two days later, I am early for a date in town with Greg. The kids are in the car and the weather, which had been rainy all day, has cleared. Suddenly, I decide to walk to the restaurant, pulling off Main Street onto a random side street a quarter mile from the restaurant. Remarkably, there is one parking spot. I pull into it. I get out, and I'm getting the stroller out of the back of my car, when I hear a voice.

Carol.

I turn around, and she is standing on the sidewalk behind me. My old friend, who now lives in Denver, who I have not seen since two days before Liam's birth, who I dreamed about bumping into two nights earlier. Chandra is there, in my town, right behind where I suddenly, randomly decided to park my car.

I walked across the street and met her eye.

I prophesied this, I told her. Two nights ago I dreamed that I bumped into you on the street and I didn't know what to say.

Do you? She asked.

No, I answered. And I hugged her, and ended up spending the whole evening with her. It was perhaps the only way our friendship could have been saved, and it was.

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I will keep you posted about Joanna.