I am a vivid dreamer and often remember my own outlandish dreams, for example the dream I had last night wherein I was returning to the USA from Europe on an airplane with a girlfriend I'd been visiting there, when I realized that I had forgotten to tell my son's school AND my husband that I was going to be out of town for the day. (LOL!)
In the dream, I arrived at home to find authorities waiting for me at the airport, ready to escort me to my children's respective schools so that I could pick them and explain the whole thing to their principals. I awakened feeling terribly guilty that my children had been waiting for me for hours.
(In an interesting coincidence, the first thing I remember hearing this morning when I opened my eyes were the words "Mommy, WHEN IS BREAKFAST GOING TO BE READY? I'm hungry, and I've been WAITING for you forever!!!")
Dreams are an amazing way in which my psyche tackles the problems of daily life using tools far beyond reality; giving me skills that I sometimes wish I had - like the ability to hear what other people are thinking, or the ability to fly.
In my dreams I speak with people who have died, like my father... and I've also had long and emotional conversations with old friends and boyfriends (in sleeping dreams) where we hashed through all of the old bad times and found peace and forgiveness.
In all of the years that I've been dreaming, however, I have only experienced ONE waking dream. A vision, I suppose one would call it, of the future. A vision of MY future.
I come from a family of intuitive people, several of whom have a keen ability to foresee events before they happen or locate lost objects. As I've mentioned before in this blog, I've never experienced evidence of having those same skills... but I have at times been able to predict who was calling on the telephone just by hearing it ring, back in the days before Caller ID.
My lifelong lack of intuition or a developed sixth-sense almost serves to lend more credibility to the single glimpse I've had of something that may be yet to come.
Happily, the vision I had pertained only to myself ~ and has nothing to do with the rest of the world, nor does it relate to any false prophecy about impending apocalypse.
When I was about eight years old, my mother and I were shopping at a local department store where I was trying on clothes for school. Even now I can picture the row of changing rooms perfectly, despite the fact that I haven't been back to that store for years.
I was standing facing the full length mirror and my mother was sitting on the bench that many changing rooms have, a bench attached to the back wall of the room itself. We were chatting. Then suddenly I felt a little hot and flushed and needed to sit down for a second, and while I was sitting on the floor I had a vision of myself as an adult.
I saw a woman wearing a wide brimmed summer hat, laughing and looking up at a taller man who had a very specific face and memorable brown curly-ish hair. The woman looked to be in her thirties or forties, but somehow I knew that it was me. They were walking down a sunny street somewhere, I thought maybe in Europe (even though I'd never been to Europe at the age of eight) and I could feel that the woman was very happy.
The part that really stood out in my vision was the hat - stylish and wide, a throwback to a different time. I cannot recall now whether the hat was yellow or red, but the entire scene was bright and brought me a feeling of confidence and ease about my future.
When I told my mother about the vision that day, she assumed that I had glimpsed was the man I was going to marry when I grew up. We giggled about it, given that I was only eight years old at the time. (This story may explain a few of the tall, dark haired "mistakes" I made later in life before meeting my husband, heehee!)
Anyone that knows my family will know that I do have a handsome sweetheart of a husband and he is anything but tall and dark. He is the "perfect" height of 5'10'' and more dishwater blond than anything, with bright blue eyes. He doesn't look a bit like the man in that waking dream.
I'm also 35 years old now, and still don't look as old as I did in that vision. (Thank you, DNA!)
So I'd mainly forgotten about the vision, accepting that it was either wishful thinking about adulthood in the mind of a child OR that it was an alternative reality that never came to pass. Then one day a few months ago, I looked at my five year old son - who is growing like a WEED! - and realized that he has the same face and hair from my vision, just much younger.
"Wow," I exclaimed. "You know what honey? I think mommy had a dream about you - where you were all grown up - when I was just a little girl!"
To a five year old boy, anything is possible. Toy Story and Star Wars characters are just on the other side of real. Talking cartoons *may* really exist out there as far as he is concerned. So, he took my statement in stride as though it was no big deal. "Oh yeah? That's cool, Mom."
"Yeah, it IS cool," I agreed. Looking at his wavy-curly dark hair and thinking about how tall he already is for his age, I realized that there is a VERY strong chance that he will look identical to the man in my vision someday.
Reflecting on my vision, I thought to myself - "Well, my son and I could certainly be walking down a street somewhere in the sunshine, someday." I wondered about that HAT though. Why would I ever be wearing such a large, wide-brimmed woman's hat? Maybe if I was at the beach or something - but really, I'm not a hat type of girl.
"I guess we'll see what the future holds," I decided, and promptly let go of my vision again.
Last week we went as a family to the beach with our friend and I managed to get a terrible sunburn, despite the almost total lack of Sun. I had forgotten the warning about mixing my antibiotics with direct sunlight, and also that you can get a sunburn even on a cloudy day.
The result was an epic burn, the worst that I (a woman with an olive complexion) have ever had in my life. For three days I could barely sleep on my back, the pain was so intense. My back, along with the back of my legs, turned the color of a lobster and once the burned skin began to heal it was itchy as all get-out. Finally, when the new skin had formed, I began to peel and all of the old skin came off.
Very quickly, it became clear to me that as long as I am taking long term antibiotics for lyme disease and the rheumatic disease situation, I will need to cover up a lot more in the outdoors - wearing longer skirts, blue jeans and ~ you guessed it ~ hats.
Yesterday as I popped another doxycycline all of these pieces came together in a full circle and I had to wonder: "Will I still be taking long-term antibiotics in ten or twenty years?" (Some rheumatic patients do... I've known of a few who have taken them up to fifty years.)
If that is truly the case for me, then at the age of eight I may have had a vision of myself - a happy mother - with my adult son (handsome!) walking in the sunshine wearing a large hat, thanks to my long-term use of antibiotics such as doxycycline. Which, if you think about it, is pretty amazing and specific.
Again, only time will tell if this ever does take place as I saw it so long ago... but I love the questions it raises about the nature of time, deja vu and presque vu.
Are all of the days of our lives planned in advance? Does time move in a circle? Is it truly possible for a person to glimpse their own future?
I suppose I would love for this vision to come true. If the man I "saw" does turn out to be my son, who will turn six years old in about a month, then I've got at least 15? (and from the look of it, several more) years left on this beautiful Earth spent outdoors and traveling - with happy, sunny, healthful days yet to come.
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