We're Not Alone

Sending out the hope that you’re doing all right in the midst of this emergency and that you’re staying safe and connecting as well as you can with friends and loved ones. I’m doing a lot of walking and otherwise sheltering.  Shut-in, we have more time for reflection, for memories, time for reading, too, and at least I can offer you a story to occupy your thoughts, something to ponder that I hope you enjoy.

“TWO DREAMS AT ONCE”

By Gerald DiPego
 

I wonder if it’s possible to be inside two dreams at the same time. When we’re asleep and having a confusing dream, maybe we’re actually experiencing two intertwined dreams, both happening together – like this.

It’s Thanksgiving morning, and I awake slowly because of a rich and remarkable scent that I know immediately, even though it comes to me only once a year. I’m twelve and still deep in the womb of the bed, not sure where the bed ends and I begin. I don’t want to be fully born into this day, not yet, so I lay there and find I’m beginning to smile softly, my face still pulpy and creased from sleep, and I’m happy and growing happier, and this is because my mother makes the best turkey and gravy, and, more importantly, the best stuffing anywhere in this world, and this is the scent that has entered my knowing and given me this deep sense of pleasure even before I’m fully conscious.

I could stay in bed. There’s sure to be more cooking needed in the kitchen downstairs, but pleasure and even excitement make me rise, and I begin to dress. It’s chilly on this Illinois Thanksgiving morning so I dress quickly. We have already had several snows. There is frost on my window.

But, I’m also 78 and driving a car.  This is one dream, mixing with the other. I’m dressed in a thick coat, wearing gloves, driving along the skinny highway that links the lake towns of northern Illinois, and, now, slowing and turning off the paved road onto gravel mixed with dirty snow, and I know where I’m going. I still know how to get there, the house on Idyllwild Drive where I grew up from age six to 19, and I’m excited to be going there, but why?  I’m not sure. There is something there. I feel this strongly, something important.

I walk down the stairs and into the kitchen, and my mother, without looking up from the stove, tells me, “Have some toast, but no cereal. I don’t want you to spoil your appetite.”  As if, I think, as if I would even slightly dent this all-engulfing hunger for the planet’s finest stuffing. I keep looking out the frosty windows. Something is drawing me outside. Why?  It’s warm in the house. Icy out there. “Snowed again last night,” I tell my mother, but she‘s having her own conversation. “In fifteen minutes go wake up your brother. Look at the clock.”

I don’t look at the clock. I look out the window and see that there is a car parked by our mailbox, its exhaust smoking the air. I don’t recognize the car, and…there’s no mail on Thanksgiving.

I’m 78 and driving down the graveled hills I use to tear over on my bike, some of them steep. Even at this age I probably still carry some bits of stone in my knees from several spectacular falls. I see the house, and my breath cuts off, and I feel the silent machinery of tears forming. I pull over and park on the side of the house where the mail box stands. My breaths are shaky now. All those piled up years are tumbling out of order, tumbling in my mind with shouts and laughter, pain and bright joy, and my jaw is shaking, and I’m grinning a trembling grin, and now the door to the house is opening.

I’ve put on my jacket and I’m snapping my galoshes into place over my shoes. I don’t even reach for my hat, and I don’t know why I’m hurrying. The cold hits my face. Even my teeth are chilled. I close my mouth and ball my hands deep in my pockets and stare at the car. I have never seen a car like it. Its engine is still running, and I can see the driver, but not clearly. He seems old.

From the car, I stare out at the child I used to be. And he stares at me. I recognize him not from the old mirrors, but from the old photographs where he is captured so many times. There are tears on my face, but I don’t touch them. This is him. This is me. I was shy, and I see his shyness, understand his pause. In a moment, and with an effort, I make my arm rise and wave him toward the car. He comes closer, but slowly. There is a ditch before the road, and he trudges into deep snow and pulls hard to take the next steps, and I can feel exactly what he’s feeling, what I felt so often in so many winters here, in this same yard, the heavy pull of the snow. He’s closer now, and I make myself lean across to the passenger side and lower the window.

The man in the car waves me over, and I think maybe he’s lost and needs directions, but mostly, as I walk on, I’m staring at the car, so low to the ground and…sleek. I see him lean over to roll the passenger window down, but it doesn’t seem to roll. It just glides down, and I know my mouth is open because my teeth are chilled again, and I look at him, without the frosty glass between us, and even though there’s something familiar about him, I can’t find his face in my memory, and I wonder what he’s going to say. He’s smiling and seems to be…emotional, and I stay quiet, still wondering.

My young self stands three feet from the car window, stopped there. I swallow and then say these words to him, “Hello, Jer.” And these impossible words ring in my brain and grip my heart like fingers. He makes a small nod, full of wonder. I can see that he doesn’t quite find himself in me, but he’s troubled, so I try to relax him and I ask...“How old are you?”  He pauses a moment, then says, “Twelve. There’s no mail, right?”  I answer “No, I have no mail.” And he nods and says, “Thanksgiving.” And then I nod and wonder what to say. Why am I here?  I ask that question and know the answer immediately – to give him something. To give him something important. I’m not sure what. I don’t want him to be troubled and confused, so I stumble on and make my smile as comforting as I can. “I…just have something to tell you, that’s all.”

The man in the car says that he has something to tell me, and I’m nervous because I don’t know who he is, and I’m trying to figure it out. Some relative from Chicago?  Some old friend of my parents? And why not just knock on our door?  “Do you…want to come in?” I ask him, but he shakes his head, and, still smiling at me, seems to be working out what he wants to say.

I look at the boy’s face, my young face, and see the worry and want to take it away. I want to tell him…what?  That it’s going to be okay. Life. His life…is going to be okay, but that’s not saying anything he can truly understand. What is it he needs to hear?  I know he’s afraid of bullies at school and makes himself ready in case they try to shame him as they do others, and I could say…don’t be afraid. It’s not going to happen. But why would he believe it?  Something any old man might say to any boy. I know that at his age he’s beginning to feel just the first slivers of sexuality, certain girls, older girls, how they look, women in movies, in the books he reads. Some of the scenes stir him in a new way, and I could say, don’t be worried about girls. It’ll be okay with girls, and you’ll grow up and you’ll marry. But I don’t say that because I remember being him, being twelve, and hearing those words would have only embarrassed me. There must be something I can say. What else is happening in his life now?  What does he love?  He loves his books, Kipling’s stories and “Tarzan” and “Treasure Island,” and tales of the old European armies, the uniforms, the “Charge of the Light Brigade,” the pure adventure of it all. The adventure. The far-off places. He imagines this. He can taste it. It fills him. I remember. It filled me. “I better go in,” the boy says, then goes on, “It’s Thanksgiving, so…I better…” He starts to back away, but the idea comes, and I say, “Wait. Listen. Just…”

The man is excited now, and wants to tell me something, but it’s all so confusing. Who is he and why is he here? He’s staring so hard it scares me.

“Thanksgiving” I say to the boy, gripping the idea as if in a fist, sure now of what to say. “Yes. Yes, listen, listen, Jer, there will be another Thanksgiving, many years from now, another Thanksgiving morning, and you’ll wake up because of a sound, a strange sound, and you’ll get out of the bed where your wife is still sleeping and you’ll move to the door to listen, and you’ll be thrilled, you’ll be thrilled by the sound, the sound of the rhinos fighting in the tall grass, thrashing and fighting in the tall grass just fifty yards from your tent. It’s true, Jer. It’s all true.”

The man is almost crying and saying crazy things about…rhinos, and I can’t even think, and I’m backing up in the snow, but I can’t turn around yet because his eyes are holding me, and I’m trying to understand. He says it’s about me!  He says I’ll be there…with the rhinos!  I’ll be right there, and it’ll be Thanksgiving, and I don’t understand, and I turn then and hurry to the house.

I’ve frightened the boy. Maybe I shouldn’t have said it, but I wanted to help him. I wanted to make him feel good about what’s coming, what’s out there for him. But…I wonder. Now It’ll be in his mind. Is that all right?  Maybe it shouldn’t be in his mind – that moment, it should be a surprise, and now I’ve spoiled it. Haven’t I?  I don’t know. I’m confused, and I pull away from the house and drive on and make a turn and then another, and I drive too fast over the gravel and the dirty snow and find, then, in this old warren of country streets and homes, that I’ve lost my way.

I hurry inside the house, and hear my mother shout, “Why did you go outside?  Come and help me.”  And I pull off my jacket and unbuckle the galoshes, and now I’m smelling that scent again, and it’s drawing me, taking me away, and I don’t know why I went outside. I don’t know. And what happened out there in the cold?  What happened?  Something happened, but the memory of it is melting, melting away like the snow on the galoshes, melting and gone. “Smells great, Mom. Great.”