passed halfway... 26600 the dream

Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
Mr. Henry’s assignment won’t leave me alone.
I had a dream last night.
I have been dreaming constantly in recent months; mostly shadows and imaginings – nothing clear and tangible – until last night.
Last night was different.
I dreamed Jack and I were parents to a tiny army of children, just like Les and his wife. I dreamed that over the delectable years of our marriage, we added sons and daughters, each one bringing the joy that I saw on Les’ face as he described the arrival of his tenth child. In my dream, it was night, and all was dark and quiet, and I held our youngest, a little boy – in a room with dim lights and a tiny cradle. His eyes fluttered and faltered, and I knew that as just as he was perched precariously on the edge of sleep, so too was I perched precariously on a single grain in the sands of time, and that it was about to slip from beneath my feet, in the beautiful, merciless twist and tumble that time has about her. I knew that as his eyelashes fluttered – and his chest began to rhythmically rise and fall – that that precious bit of time would in another breath be over, and that grain of sand after it’s hurtling fall through the hourglass would land; mixed and jumbled with the other moments of these precious years in the sands below. I tried desperately to drink in the tiny one – as his mouth pursed and sucked the air, his hand, once waving, now paused in midair as he began to drift. I memorized his features and breathed in his baby scent – the longing of my subconscious being sustained for a moment by the baby of my dreams.
When I woke, I got up with the image of the babe of my dreams fresh in my mind, and wrote my imagined tale of motherhood.