Cave of Remembered Dreams

I had a deep complicated dream about my family and my past. I went to live in my grandmother Happy’s house. I brought in all my stuff and decorations, and set everything up, room by room. I saw the bedroom I would sleep in, where my grandfather died. I saw the living room where my mother died. I was in the bathroom and saw my reflection in the mirror for a split second before I looked away. I thought about getting a job in a restaurant, the commute to work I’d have. I considered inviting Eliot or my aunt to come hang out. Some features of the house were different and it was less creepy than it sounds. The seated swing my grandparents got for one of their last anniversaries was still in the backyard. An old man walked beside the house, with a cut on his face. He looked like a vagrant. I saw him from the kitchen / breezeway. I stepped outside and told him to get lost. He said he knew me, mentioned maybe buying a terrarium, as in he read my blog. He sprinted to the front door. I chased him telling him he wasn’t welcome and he turned and attacked me. As he ran at me I threatened that I would put him on my blog, took out my iPhone and took his photo with the phone’s camera. He charged me again and I took his photo again. When I looked down at the photo I’d taken, I saw that his face was actually composed of the tiny image of a young, happy family…

I woke up in my new bedroom in Chicago, my brain now as tired from overwork as my body had been when I’d lay down for the afternoon nap. I thought about my aunt, and her house by the seashore. I thought back to when my sister and I had to gather up any last belongings from our childhood home. Was there anything I missed that I wished I had now? The answer was no. Not even the handmade wooden crib made for my aunt and brought home from Europe after World War II. Although that item gave me pause. It had been in the attic. I went up alone for it but froze at the top of the ladder. I remembered my grandmother’s house. How again my sister and I were the last two to see it before the house and everything in it were sold. Another human scale time capsule we visited. Time travelers, moving forward. Would I have wanted to keep the house and live in it? The weight of love and memories was too much. I thought of my other aunt, who left Connecticut for Florida. For the first time I think I understood why she left. It was the same reason I had to leave Boston, so close to my family in Connecticut. To leave home again and again. On a circular path leading forever forward.