I was jolted out of a dream around 6:45 by Cora who was calling for us from her room, and while that might technically be considered the start of my day, the dream I was having was so beautiful and vivid, and that is where I chose to begin. Josephine [my bike] and I were on a fantastic journey through a city comprised of all the places I've lived, and I ran into many friends and family members along the way. The journey began with a friend pointing out a church we were passing. On a designated day, this church (along with many others) tried to fill the world with God's light. This was done at night with the congregation standing on the large lawn of the church, and shining lights up into the night sky. As I toward the end of their collective light's reach, a sort of shimmer shot across the sky and faded within seconds. I'm not entirely sure what the adventure that followed was all about, but I'm certain that a quest for God's light was at the root of it.
After Cora's speech therapy, we ran a few errands and ended up at our neighborhood park. There was a group of three high school girls. One of them was absolutely darling. She was smitten with Cora. She went on the monkey bars and swings with her, and after one of Cora's friends from school showed up, I ended up swinging next to her for a while. She and the other two girls were involved with the production of a play at Classen School of Advanced Studies (a nearby middle/high school). One of the girls is working on her Girl Scout Gold Award (like and Eagle Scout award in Boy Scouts), and directing this play is her big final project. I was invited to this evening's performance, and was happily able to attend. The play was called Eat, and its purpose is to bring awareness to eating disorders, specifically in young people. It was performed by middle schoolers, and I was impressed.
Interacting with those girls today, and being in the school made me feel a rush of sentimentality toward my life as a teacher. I was a high school teacher because I love interacting with people that age. At church I work with girls 12-18, more specifically the 14-15 year olds. I adore them. It's just a tender time in life. I love the magic, and the energy, and the possibility, and the jumble of emotion that comes with trying to figure "it" out. When I saw the girls at the show, they were so glad I came. I am also invited to and plan on attending Urinetown, which runs February 20-22, I believe. Eat runs through Saturday. It was a well-spent hour of my life.
After the show, I went to Whole Foods per Jake's request for a cookie. When I was on my way to get my favorite gigantor vegan chocolate chip cookie, I spotted a woman I went to college with. I haven't seen her since she came to Northwest Classen when I was still a teacher there. It was right after I had Cora, and she was getting her oldest son's records straightened out because her family was moving to Austin. I'd assumed she was still there. We were in several writing classes together, and from her writing, I learned that our lives shared a few important features. I loved that she was working on her masters, had three sons, and wore a simple gold wedding band. She wrote a poem that I still think about. It compared life to a leaf falling from a tree and swirling along the sidewalk, and in the end it gets caught under the foot of someone passing by and blown away in the wind. I wish I could remember word for word because my description falls short of the essence of what I've remembered it for. Anyway, she lives a few miles away from us, and is now the mother or four sons, her youngest is two months younger than Magnolia. I hope we'll be able to meet up in the future.
And somehow at the end of this day full of chance encounters, everything comes back around to the journey I was on in my dream. It might make more sense if I explained more of what happened in my dream, I wrote five pages about it after I woke up while everyone else was eating breakfast, but I think I'll keep that to myself for now. The rest of the details are like those of most dreams - they really only make sense to the dreamer. While I know it's unlikely, I hope to pick up where I left off tonight. I was entering the lobby of a church where colorful plastic milk crates were stacked in a pyramid on a table. As I walked towards them, they began to topple, but before any of them could make a thud, they were magically gathered together into one crate at the center of the table. And then I woke up.
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