I don’t often remember my dreams. I long ago realized that it wasn’t that I didn’t dream, but that I generally don’t remember them. Night after night will pass and I will surface from sleep without any memory of a dream, good or bad. Sometimes I will wake up with a fragment remembered. More often I realize during the morning that I dreamed during the night, but beyond a very slight impression or mood, I have no idea what I dreamed.

When I was a child, I had, like most children, nightmares. Most of mine centered around snakes. I’ll leave you to infer what you will from that subject.

After Bo died, I had a number of extremely vivid dreams about him, many of which I recorded in my journal. I read the first one a few months ago when I unpacked my old journals and burst into tears, so I haven’t gone back to read more of then.

I do have erotic dreams occasionally, which I find reassuring. They are rarely explicit and most quite fragmentary (although sometimes I wake enough to segue them into extended fantasy), but seem to focus on my own fetishes of being held and feeling loved and desired. Well, some of them are sexier than the previous sentence implies, but that wonderful feeling of being held is what I am generally left with, to my great comfort.

All this is to preface a brief recap of a dream I had just before waking this morning. First, I have to outline a scene I witnessed over and over again in the years before I escaped from my parents: my mother (usually referred to here as Leona), drunk beyond reason or coherence, leaning over my dad (Ed), accusing him of “oogling” (I kid you not; this is the WWII generation, you know) another woman at a cocktail party. As her alcoholic dementia progressed the accusation progressed as well: “screwing those yellow gooks” (Ed spent a year in Vietnam, attending Mass daily and writing his wife daily as well).

So I got exposed to, even dragged into adult scenes I couldn’t understand or solve or escape for a number of years. And, you know--I am just now remembering this--last night as I was reading in bed, the couple on the other side of the wall (their apartment is on the front side of the barn, so I am not sure who they are--it sounded like two guys, but that can’t be possible here in NH, so it must be one of these rustic local gals with the cigarette-deepened voice) were quarreling. I couldn’t hear much, but one of them was making biting comments in a nasty tone of voice--the word “fucking” came through the wall clearly. They faded away before I quit reading, but not before I had a slight reaction.

I have this slight reaction--sometimes not so slight--whenever I am the witness to other’s quarrels. I remember seeing a man strike his girlfriend (I presume; only intimacy or crime--let’s agree to include war and racial and the myriad other group hatreds in the definition of crime, okay?--seems to allow people to behave with such hatred to others). This was in San Francisco’s Tenderloin. I carried that image with me for days and weeks. Even a verbal quarrel on the subway makes me cringe. So I guess my "slight reactions" amount to a recoil from what I see as a variant on those ugly scenes between ma and pa.

So maybe that intimate ugliness prompted my dream. Maybe it was because I saw Leona yesterday and was so irritated by her self-centered stupidity that I sniped at her the whole time I was with her (all 15 minutes). Maybe I am never free from from the shadow of the ugliness that we inflict on those closest to us.

So here’s the dream: I am in a room with my sister. With the transcendent clarity of dreams, I can see into the next room, where Leona leans over Ed and issues one of her catch phrases, “You, looking at that woman...” I can’t begin to convey the ugly sneer and threat in that phrase.

This would all be a reprise of the past, a scene I saw acted out, with minor variations, over and over again for, what?, twenty-five years or so? But the chilling dream alteration is that my parents are as they are today: Leona desiccated to her current cancer-ridden wireframe figure and Ed stiff and glazed in his dementia.

And I went into the dream kitchen and laid on the floor and cried and screamed. In some way, I’m there still.

Dear Bo,

Christmas is nothing without you. I still remember how it felt to lean back against your knees at Ron’s party and to feel your warm brown fingers on my shoulder. That was our first Christmas and it was almost an accident, wasn’t it?

I remember all those parties we threw and how you were the inspiration and soul of them, cigarette, string of pearls (which sits tonight on my bedside table), and all your wit. Remember these: fans from Chinatown, Desiderata, red and green wrapped condoms with green and red chocolate kisses? And that was only three of five years of Christmas favors. Our house was so perfect for those parties.

I remember our last Christmas (not that we knew), you fussed because at last I had a bit of money and you thought you wouldn’t match what I got you. Ha! You always out did me and it had nothing to do with money spent.

I wish I could go back to who I was then, with you. With all those insecurities and problems, I was a better person then. You made me a better person.

There is one moment I have thought about over and over again (well, there are thousands of our moments past that I think about, but this is among the most important, somehow). Ten years on, memory tells me that it was in the short six weeks or so between Christmas and when you started to get sick, but it could have been months earlier. You were standing in the upstairs hallway and you did a little jig in your stocking feet and said “I’m so happy right now” apropos of no specific event, but simply reflective a moment in time when your life, your work, and our relationship were all going well.

And I remember feeling a little awed. Because you were radiating happiness, almost glowing with it. You were very full of life at that moment. I can see you still, outlined in the doorway to my room, pirouetting in your awkward dance and so very happy.

You were capable of so much life and fun and true understanding. I miss you forever.

dan