She flies through the air with the greatest of ease

I guess by rights this should be posted to my dream blog, but it seemed a little more fitting to put it here. I wasn't going to blog it at all, but . . . well, I changed my mind. The line between personal journalling and public blogging is sometimes fuzzy, or maybe it should be.

Last night was a sad night for me. I read a blog entry that was written by the friend of a friend of my sister-in-law (who is also my friend), and it was all about her recent home birth, which for her whole family seemed to be a beautiful and perfect experience. There were many exquisite and moving photos of the mama and her baby, of the baby, of the family, of the placenta, of everything that doesn't require a restricted rating.

I didn't realize how it had affected me till I started winding down and getting ready for bed. I think that the constant stresses of negotiating life with Gram were bearing down on me, and then when I looked into the mirror and marvelled at how my hair is so rapidly going whitewhitewhite I went into a kind of shock and realized that I am getting old (or else my hair is simply reflecting the greatest, most sustained stress high of my life). So it was on top of that that I went into some kind of mourning again for babies, for miscarriages, for being the last of my family left with no mortal hope of seeing them again, for the whole deal. It felt like my heart was breaking, or rather, being crushed. Rob came in late, worn thin by the day (work is crazy right now), so I didn't want to keep him up talking when he was so exhausted. I knew if I slept with him I would only cry and keep him from resting, so I crashed in my clothes on the couch upstairs. It was hard to sleep and when I did I had bad dreams. I wanted to wake up early this morning, because that's the only time I have really before Gram is up and suffering, but by the time I made it to consciousness, it was already 9:00. Rob didn't want to wake me up, assuming I'd stayed up very late, and even the sun wouldn't take the job. Anyway, this day got off to a late, melancholy, and weary start.

Then I got an email from my wonderful friend in San Francisco. She had a dream about me last night. Here it is:

"You & Rob were in my dream last night. I was over at your house, and I kept trying to pack up my stuff and get out of your way, because you had things to do, but every time you'd leave the room I'd fall asleep again, wake up embarrassed when you returned . . .

"But--you had a daughter. She wasn't a baby, she was maybe 9 or 10. Sophie [T.]. Dark hair and eyes. She was sunny and funny and smart, like I would have expected, and easy in her skin. She was starting to have a little of the pre-teen gangly, long and lean limbs.

"Your house had all these ropes hanging from the ceiling, and Sophie would put her arms around your neck while you swung gracefully from rope to rope across the room."

Predictably, this made me cry too. But what a sweet kind of thing to receive, especially after such a lonely, forlorn night. I still felt sad today, and so tired, but this was a pretty little glimmer of hope. For those of you who know anything of the Sophie saga, this may be more recognizably hopeful than just a random dream. Anyway, I appreciated my friend's night vision more that I know how to say.