To Wake, Perchance to Dream

"A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down whole, absent-mindedly and with little relish" ~ W.H. Auden

      Dreams are your mind's way of telling you something - of shocking or scaring you, or delivering an encrypted message to you. But daydreams are your mind's way of giving itself whatever it wants. Daydreams are like our own personal movies, where we are the screenwriting, director, producer, and often the star. I think I'm safe in assuming that everyone indulges in fantasy from time to time, and I think it's because of this that we are able to survive the slow, humdrum spells of our lives and not go mad. We rarely get what we want in reality, but in our minds, even while we're carrying out a very real day's business, unbeknownst to those around us, we can always get exactly what we want.

   A particular day dream has occupied me quite often and for great lengths of time since I reached the thinking age, and I would like to share it with you, being generous with detail:

  

    It's early morning, sometime in my late twenties. The sun is still breaking the horizon, but is obscured by the hazy green of the willows surrounding my cozy house. My wife and I live in a quiet community, on the banks of a sleepy river, which rolls silently by as I sip my coffee and look out my back door. It's a grand morning, cool and humid with the breath of the river and the rain.

    I turn back to the room behind me, a little living room with an old, comfortable couch and a couple chairs. On the wall are photos of my beautiful wife, and my two beautiful daughters, and of our old labrador. I pick up a newspaper and see a picture of my new restaurant on the front page of the Life section.

    Walking down the shadowy hall, just barely illuminated in the twilight of the house, I crack open my bedroom door and look inside. I can see my wife's curly brown hair resting on the pillow where I left it. She is fast asleep. I look down and sniff my t-shirt - the front of it still smells like her shampoo, because she slept on my chest like she always does.

   The next door is the girls' room. My eleven-year-old looks serene, an unusual condition for her. She has her mother's hair, and in its curly glory it lies in chaos across the pillow. My seven-year-old is in the most uncomfortable-looking position you can imagine, but sleeps completely still, with a hint of a smile on her face.

  Finally is my office, and there on the loveseat where he is frequently to be found is my ridiculous, absurd dog. I think about how he makes me laugh when he follows my wife everywhere. And when he falls asleep in the oddest places and at the oddest hours. And I think about how grateful I am that he scared away the man who broke into my house last summer when my oldest was home alone. I walk in quietly, sit down next to him, and with a groan he wakes up and leans his head against my leg. As I scratch his cheek, I say, "You know, we have it pretty good, don't we?"

    Perhaps I have described it with more of a literary charm than I ever actually imagined it, but that's the virtue of writing, isn't it? And this is just an old daydream, one that I know like the back of my hand, I have dreamt it so many times. But the most wonderful and exciting daydreams are the ones we are having now, that we have at the spur of the moment.

    The funny thing about daydreams is, some of them are just real enough to come true. I know that recently, I have daydreamed quite often about a woman I know, and find myself unable to determine if this is purely a fantasy or if it may come true. To her I say this:

   I don't know what it means. But I know that you awaken me.