These Dreams

They are too close to reality

It’s never very interesting to hear about someone else’s dream. But look at me now, telling you about last night’s dream. I startled awake because my dogs were barking at something that didn’t exist, and it took me nearly an hour to regain my footing and feel safe and human again.

My dream last night was a kaleidoscope of twisty family memories that never really occurred. I screamed at my niece—who was also, somehow, my cousin—for casually mistreating our aunt. I was so angry, I wanted to shake her, to hit her, and she smiled at me sardonically while I raged, immune to my out-of-control behavior.

Then there was a beloved uncle, on his deathbed, and saying goodbye to him was an invitation-only event. I did not receive an invitation. Instead, I was expected to make and serve food to all those who were streaming in and out for their final goodbyes, and I could not find the hamburger buns. No matter how hard I tried or how frantically I searched, they eluded me.

Most disturbing, however, was the dream sequence where my wheelchair-bound mother somehow made her way to the edge of a balcony, and I ran to save her. I was holding her by both arms while she dangled precariously, and I shouted to all the people passing below that they needed to catch her—that I couldn’t hold her much longer. And no one understood. They all continued strolling on, looking at me curiously, while I cried and screamed and held on for dear life.

None of these things, of course, ever actually happened. And I won’t try to dig into their meaning too deeply. My family history is sacred and twisted and often challenging. But I think the crux of this swirling, tie-dyed dream was helplessness in the face of so much misery.

Children being washed away by rising flood waters, crying for help in their sleeping bags, screaming in fear while clinging to stuffies on a dark night of chaos and death. Brown-skinned people being taken violently from their homes, from their workplaces, and thrown by masked men into unmarked vehicles to be driven away to god knows where. Humans—people we thought we once knew and loved—laughing at the thought of alligators eating those imprisoned for daring to search for a better life for themselves, for their own children. Mosquitos ravaging bodies in the thick, wet heat; the fear of spending hurricane season trapped in a hot tent seeping into their bones through their bitten skin. Children in foster care and the elderly in nursing homes awaiting the coming day that they no longer receive healthcare or food or comfort or hope.

Living in this country is untenable right now. Everything feels precarious. We are held hostage by a government that has been taken over by cruel and inhumane neofascists and billionaires who care nothing about whether we live or die; only that their power and their bank accounts continue to expand. We are no longer divided by political parties, we are divided by those who have hearts and souls and those who do not.

In my dream, no one stepped in to catch my mom. No one understood what was happening. Or perhaps, no one really cared. It was up to me to save her, and my arms could no longer hold.

Three of my children are days away by car and airplane. I worry about them every second of every day. Even the one who is close by feels distant.

Could I save any of them if I had to?

I read a brutal first-person account of a mother who held her school-aged daughter and toddler son as the Guadalupe River rose and demolished her family’s vacation cabin. She sat them both on the kitchen island as the house deconstructed around them; the rest of her family members close enough to see the horror of what was happening, but unable to get to her to help as the waters rushed in. She was able to hold onto her daughter. She was unable to hold her son. Sophie’s Choice, but she didn’t get to choose. The river chose for her.

I spoke with my youngest on the phone last week, like I always do. I worry that he will be drafted when the war that’s coming actually arrives. The other three, for various reasons, seem safer to me if a draft is reinstated. But not my baby, my pacifist, my plant scientist, my gentle music-maker.

“I will take you to Canada,” I told him. “I will shoot off a toe if I have to to keep you safe.”

“I’ll be fine, Mom,” he told me. “They won’t want to put a gun in my hands. They’ll put me in an office somewhere, and maybe I can fuck things up from there.”

I cannot save them, these children of mine. They are no longer children, anyway. They are adults. They are independent. They don’t want to be saved. They want to make their own decisions. They want to live their own lives in whatever way they choose to live them. I cannot save them any more than I could hold on to my dangling mother indefinitely, begging for help. I cannot control what happens to any of them.

I can only love them right where they are.

And they are so very far away, on the other side of a country that feels intent on destroying us all, one way or another.