This entry is part of my personal series, called Wish You Were There, that’s unrelated to travel.
Actually, here’s even more of a caveat-type intro. I enjoy other personal writing—part therapy, I guess, part creative adventure—but I’ve been posting that stuff less here these days because I have more readers. This piece, though, I enjoyed writing so much that I thought I’d go out on a limb and share it. I didn’t mean to get all Emily-Dickinson at the end, but that goes to show how a bit of creativity can morph personal reflection into what you wouldn’t expect.
I’ve had three recurring dreams in my life, and I remember them all clearly, even though only one’s current.
In the earliest, maybe 15 years ago, I’m washing an especially beautiful bowl. The soapy water is warm and comforting as it flows over my hands. I wash the bowl night after night.
In another, I’m swimming underwater among a forest of kelp, and my long hair flows behind me. It flashes green and blue as it catches the sunlight above. (When I described this dream to my sister, she spent a day dying my hair carefully in my kitchen sink, in layers of color that intertwined when I braided it.)
In the dream I keep having now, I’m finding myself in a house packed with furniture, and I’m thrilled with this discovery. I’d like to use this furniture in my own house, but first I’m going to enjoy organizing it. I walk through the rooms saying to myself, “I’ll put all the lamps in this corner, with the pairs together.” I’m delighted.
I’ve been talking with friends lately about what our parents leave us; sometimes about what we wish they didn’t leave for us to deal with. And I can’t help but think about that alarming time when I was going through my sister’s accounts after she died and I found a bill for two storage units. When I lifted those storage doors, I found furniture and boxes and random items packed side by side so tightly. An entire house of beautiful things, and regular things.
I wrote about this in a post called What I Found When My Sister Died, about how I was desperate to sell it all so I could pay for Mom’s assisted living. I had just given away Mom’s houseful of things when I moved her, and I’d left my houseful of things to move in with Tracy, so I was all about detachment. When Mom died just a few months later and Tracy and I decided to sell everything and move into the Airstream, I couldn’t get what was left of everything off my hands fast enough. Kim’s beautiful things, my things, Mom’s things, Tracy’s things. All of it. Out! Like Lady Macbeth washing her hands. I was desperate to be free of it all.
How do I feel about that now? I know that the experiences I’ve had are far more meaningful to me than, say, my mom’s blue sectional sofa. I sure think fondly of that blue sectional sofa, though.
Lately, when I’m on a zoom call with friends and see their family mementos behind them, I feel a yearning I’m surprised by.
I think of all the books my mom had. None of them were valuable; they didn’t have her notes in them; there was nothing special about them. But I remember their spines on bookcases as she moved, house after house, those same books. And I think about Kim’s books I found. No first editions, just how-tos about transforming your life. But, sometimes I think about those books anyway, about the library I could have had, filled with books read by my family of readers. And my mind’s eye goes to those lamps I find in my dream. Put all the pairs in this corner. Put the especially beautiful ones right here. What a feeling of gratitude I have when I look at those lamps.
How much do our dreams comfort us? It’s painful to think that one day Tracy and I won’t live in the Airstream anymore, and we’ll need to start over with furniture. After having given away so much, I’ll have to buy it piece by piece, I imagine from second-hand stores. Each item will be secretly rich with other people’s memories, people I don’t know.
What does that matter? I’ll still be washing a bowl in the sink, my hands warm in the water, thinking about my sister’s hands in my hair.
We lose everything, eventually. If we break ourselves free from what we have control over, then maybe we’re prepared when everything else leaves us. We are practiced, and we can go into the next realm without a sense of loss, knowing that beauty is not bound in things. Nor is it even in memories. It’s more akin to imagination, more like hair flowing in sunlit water, when that’s something you’ve never even seen.
While I do envy you the freedom of being unbound from a house and all the endless possessions that go with it… I’m too sentimental to ever let go of my father’s paintings or my mother’s handwritten recipe books. They may be just things, but they’re all I have left.
I hear ya. I found in my sister’s things a recipe handwritten by my grandmother that my sister had framed. I took a picture of it. 😇
This is a beautiful piece of writing. The way you describe those dreams is so sensory and vivid. Bravo!