Dreaming a New Dream

As follow up to my last Blog post, Forties ARE Fabulous: Losing Sight While Gaining Vision, here are my new specs. ^ I am lucky to have great friends who've made me feel much better about my declining eyesight by telling me that I look "sexy" in my new specs.  Hot for teacher is just fine with me!  Ha!  Well, whether they're sexy or spinster, they're mine and I'm owning it! 8-)

This week, I was planning to blog about why I call myself a "red headed wannabe", but then I had a dream which was so significant that I'm shifting gears, for now.  For those of you who already know me, it will come as no great surprise that I had a dream worthy of writing about.  If someone can come up with a way to record my dreams, I am fairly certain I could make millions at the box office.  Most are just realistic enough to be either terrifying or profoundly moving, and although there are moments where nothing makes sense, my dreams are like my parallel universe.  Think Sliding Doors.

I have dreamed in black and white.  I have dreamed entirely in French.  I can will myself to reenter a dream.  Once I shared a dream with someone else (don't ask). More than once, the dead have visited me in my dreams, not my loved ones who have passed, but people I don't know, wanting to know if I really can see and hear them.  Sometimes I dream of things before they happen.  My parents used to call me "witchy".

Now that you think I am completely whacked, there's another thing -- I remember all my dreams in vivid detail for hours, days, sometimes months or years after having them.  No, not all of them, but many, and some haunt me in my waking hours.  I have a handful of reoccurring dreams that I can still remember from early childhood.  I could sit down and tell you about them.

Every night of my life, my dreams from the previous sleep reenter my head as if beckoning me to my other life.  I can't stop it.  It is part of who I am.

My favorite dreams are when my Mother visits me.  Since she passed away, five and half years ago, I most often dream she is angry with me.  Lord only knows why, because if you knew my Mom, you would understand how crazy that is!  But I love when I dream we are talking on the phone.  It's like having a personal line to heaven.  We talk about everyday things, just like old times. I wake up gloriously happy and then reality hits me.  Hard.

This New York girl was happily living in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio until summer 2011. It took years of adjustment, but I was truly happy living in the mid-west. Idyllic neighborhood, comfortable home, greatest girlfriends.  My two daughters were well adjusted, had wonderful friends, were involved in many activities, they loved their school.  In this happy mix, my husband was very unhappy.  Fourteen years at a job where his talent and efforts were under-appreciated and going nowhere fast.  After three rounds of layoffs, he saw the writing on the wall, and wanted to be in the drivers seat in seeking a position at a company who would recognize his value.  Seasonal depression didn't help either.  So, when he was offered a job in Savannah, Georgia  it was HIS dream come true.  This was not MY dream.

Marriage is work, an ever changing partnership that sometimes asks more of one, and later the other.

My best girlfriends rallied around me during the interview process and promised me the move wasn't really going to happen. We had backyard patio pow-wows, and huddled together over cocktails in messy group denial. We cried.  No one wanted to believe it when I announced we were actually moving.  My house sold before it was put on the market and we were gone before reality sunk in completely.

Change is HARD.  Six months in a tiny, dark apartment was plenty of time for me to come to terms with my new reality. Fast forward a year and a half post-move, a lot has changed.  We live in a home that is beyond what I ever imagined for myself.  We are part of a remarkable congregation that instantly felt like home.  Like family.  Our house is ten minutes drive from Tybee Island beach, ten minutes from Historic Savannah.  My children are resilient; both are doing well in school and have each made terrific friends.  My husband loves his job, and his new company knows they won the lottery when they hired him.

The sunshine offers powerful healing, for all of us. 

Time has a way of making things clear, and so do my dreams.  Last Saturday night, I dreamed that my husband took a job back in central Ohio and sold our beautiful waterfront home. Without telling me.  Without telling the kids.  Surprise!  He was doing what he thought we WANTED him to do.  Sacrificing his dreams for ours.  There were no goodbyes in Georgia.  No chance to pack-up.  No chance to grieve our new life.  It was shocking.  The kids and I knew that going back to our old neighborhood would be different.  Our former house is not OUR home anymore.  Scene fades to black as I rode in the car as a helpless passenger on the road to "home". Awake.

I lay in bed wondering, just where is "home"?  I'm not sure I know.  Truth?  You can never go home again.  Little by little, your space is occupied -- by other volunteers, other employees, other friends.  People stop expecting to see you around the corner.  Little by little, they've moved on and so have I. 

I told my children about the dream.  My 11-year-old was stricken, "Mommy, I'm not sure moving back would be what I want anymore".  And then she said, "I loved our life before, but I don't think I would want to leave my friends here, or my teachers, or our home.  I would miss the ocean".  I had to agree. 

I miss my friends terribly.  Everyday.  But, my move didn't cause me to lose their friendship or their love, and I've gained so much.  A whole new world has opened itself up to us in Savannah that we never dreamed possible.  I am grateful for my Ohio life.  I am filled with gratitude for this new beginning.  The gears have shifted.  We are ready to ride...

Did I trade my friends for a house with a view? No.  The decision to move was out of my hands, but I can appreciate the view and dream a new dream.  While I'm awake.