For sometime now, I have had reoccurring dreams about my grandmother's house, a place I spent a lot of time as a child. These dreams vary in scope and detail, even in time reference, but they are each unmistakeably centered around events at her house.
My beloved grandmother is long gone but the house is still there. It is a white wood frame, with a comfortable front porch, three bedrooms and one bathroom in an tiny little town in Arkansas. My dad grew up in this house and my grandmother continued to live there after my dad left for college and my grandfather left her for the maid, until shortly before her death.
Some of my favorite childhood memories took place in this house. She was a doting grandmother in whose eyes, I could do no wrong. I had privileges in this house that would be out of the realm of consideration in my parents' house. I could play for hours on end in my grandmother's closet, dressing up in her fur, her hats, her high heels. I could play with her makeup, putting on as much as I wanted, always with the end result of a good face scrubbing that night in my grandmother's old claw-footed tub.
My grandmother would cook anything I wanted to eat and if I wanted a cake or cookies, a good portion of the batter was left in the bowl for me to lick off of an old wooden spoon. I could stay up past my bedtime watching the Hit Parade or Gun Smoke. My grandmother thought Miss Kitty was the most beautiful woman she had ever seen and the fact she worked in a saloon didn't bother my grandmother one bit.
Last night, I had a wonderful dream about my grandmother's house. The dream took place in the 50s, with everything exactly the same way it was in my childhood, but in the dream, I was the same age I am right now. My grandmother was still the beautiful tall red-head, dressed to perfection. And she catered to me as she always did, even though I appeared in this dream to be much older than she did.....time stood still for her, although it didn't for me.
I think I understand what this all means, but for fear of disrupting the perfection of it all, I am not going to dissect it. I just want to cherish the memories and the peaceful feelings it brought. And I hope these dreams will continue to visit.
Shakespeare had it right when he wrote in Hamlet, "To sleep, perchance to dream...".
