I have pretty vivid dreams.  I’m not sure how many people remember their dreams, but I remember them a lot and there are times where I’ll do something in my waking state that reminds me of some dream I had. I can even remember when I started to remember my dreams.  (That grammar is redundant but necessary.)

I had heart surgery for a heart defect from birth when I was 3 1/2 years old. (Two values where joined together so they split them and now I have a slight “backwash” slosh sound for that part of my heart; for the left ventricle I think.)

When I was in the third grade, I had a teacher who said to me “My son died of what you had.  The surgery wasn’t available then.”  At 8, I wasn’t very aware and had no idea how much seeing me must have hurt her.  Not long afterwards, she was gone and we had a different teacher who was very loving and sweet.  (And a lot older.  I have lots of memories of that class.)

For a while, I kept having dreams and some of them were the same dreams.  I dreamt of a townhouse with a creek by it and a large dome-shaped monkey-bars set.  I dreamt about a church where there were pies in the front of the church.  And I dreamt about being a hospital.

About being in a crib and my dad sleeping on a foldout bed in the same room, with a window looking out.  The time I had a hot dog with peas next to it and chocolate milk.  About the bathroom that was between my room and the next room, with orange walls.  About a grey-green bathtub in the center of a room tiled in that same color and about the hexagon shape on the bottle of soap they used.  About my last day there and the walk I took around the floor and the people that I saw (someone in traction and a couple visiting a baby in an incubator).  Also about the drive home (this was Texas) and how flat and empty the landscape looked.

I also dreamt of waking up one night and not finding Dad sleeping there when I needed to go to the bathroom.  A nurse heard me and helped me and then she played cards with me until her shift change.  The last card on the deck (Old Maid) was Hewey the Duck wearing a bonnet and diaper.

Finally I asked my mom, “Have we ever been to a church that has cakes and pies in the front?”  She said that I used to take the bus there after kindergarten sometimes.  I told her about the other dreams and she said “You are just remembering things I told you.”  I said I didn’t think she’d told me about the bathroom, since she wasn’t there in my dreams.  After that, I realized I had dreamed of things that had happened when I was younger (lol since I was 8).

I found out later that I’d probably forgotten the details of the hospital stay because of the trauma (you didn’t let kids know what to expect, back in my day) and that the conversation with the teacher triggered it.  Since then, I remember a lot of details to my dreams, although from that point, dreams were mostly not like real life.

At some point, I’ll talk more about my dreams, and some of the other revelations I’ve gotten from them.  I’m going back to bed now.  Night!