Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree Burn.
It’s amazing what the subconscious will dredge up when you least expect it. Whether dreams are a blender mix of the day’s events, your deepest fears, or actual prophecy, they’re worth listening to. I like to think of them as trying to tell me something, whether it’s something I already know that hasn’t otherwise surfaced or something I need to recognize and work through. I can go weeks without remembering a single dream, and then in two days’ time, have three dreams about the same person wake me with a holy-crap-what-was-that? My shaman friends tell me our souls visit each other in the Dreamtime and cherish there the way we accept each other and treasure each other to be who we are. I think that’s a beautiful thought—because visiting is not an option in our busy daily lives.
In one dream, I stand with him in someone else’s kitchen and we talk discreetly, letting no one know our feelings for the other and denying them to ourselves as well. It ends with a promise to follow through on all the things he’d promised to do that I had never expected from him and yet all he can do for now is tell me it isn’t time yet and all I can do is understand. I don’t like it, but I understand.
The next day, in another dream, he comes again, this time in his car and offers me a ride. I don’t remember most of the dream, later. It fades, but I remember the end. He is on his way to see a friend about a project. I’m not going there, have no business going there, don’t expect to go there, but he asks if I want to ride along and suddenly we are half-way there before I can tell him I need him to drop me off at my house. But I don’t say anything. It isn’t important. We are having too much fun talking for me to ask him to stop, to go back, to let me go back to what I was doing.
As we travel together, he tells me all about his current project and I share his excitement. We speak of music, both in song and of the spheres. He is trying to tune in to Nature, to record and emulate the exact sound of the Summer crickets. We are laughing and smiling and joking and saying, “yeah, yeah, yeah,” to each other and nodding and I lose all track of time and where I am. I am in the moment, something I’m often not.
Then as we near his destination, many miles from my home, I realize I should have told him to drop me off at my house. I doubt I’ll end up at the same destination. I’d only been along for the ride and gotten caught up in his energy. I didn’t mean to be here, don’t expect to be here.
I expect he’ll drop me at the house of a former friend and I don’t want to go there but I haven’t had time to tell him what had happened with this friend. We pass her house and don’t even slow. Maybe he knows? I am still riding with him. I didn’t expect to be, but I am.
Then we slow at another turn, and a woman I know, a mutual acquaintance, waves him down to say hello. My heart sinks because I worry that he is about to put me out with her, to leave me here with someone I don’t want to be with, but I fully expect it. After all, I never expected to accompany him to his destination. I’d never asked to. He’d never asked. And this is the last stop.
But he doesn’t stop or pull over. He doesn’t hide the fact that I shared the car ride with him. He doesn’t make our friendship obvious to this woman or to anyone else, but he does nothing to hide it either. He acknowledges the woman and drives on, passing her, taking me with him.
We arrive together at his destination and I am still surprised. And as I exit his car and follow him to meet his friends and see his newest project, I realize that he brought me along to enjoy what he’s created out of nothing and to create even more out of nothing with him.
I wake with a gasp and wonder why it is that I had simply been along for the ride, for whatever was there, and that I’d been so sure I’d end up somewhere I didn’t want to be instead of exactly where I loved to be.
Leave a Reply