I have to say that nothing looks the same as it did when we were younger. Most of the places we went to have all been closed and sadly, I am at an age when I realize the truth of mortality.
I thought about this while speaking with the owner of a pet store the other day. He used to have a television show on our local network.
His store looks the same, yet nothing is ever the same as it was.
The store owner reminded me that everything has a start and a finish. And I agree.
We all have our beginning, middle, and an end.
This is life.
However, I still have a center of youthfulness. I still have a place in my heart which I hope to keep pure.
This is where dreams come from. To me, this is the place where wonder exists and superheroes never die.
I have dreams of walking through my room of my childhood home. Every room is as it was when I was young. This is before my stereo and posters took on the gravity of teenage life and before my bedroom was more like the war room for my young rebellion.
The dream is mainly the same.
This seems to takes place before the angst of teenage life and before I had hiding spots in different corners of my bedroom.
I realize I am in my bedroom. It is day time and the sun is out.
Like summertime . . .
Like it is when there is no school . . .
I ran to every room to see who else was home, but the house was empty. At the same time, I could feel a presence. I could feel someone was home. I ran into my parents’ bedroom, but the bedroom was empty.
I say empty, but the bedroom seemed warm to me. No one was there but the room looked as if life was just there and I was a few seconds too late.
I ran to my brother’s room as well. Empty.
At the same time, everything was left the way I remember, if that makes sense.
No one was home, but the energy was there.
Then I ran to the sliding glass door. This was in our kitchen on the main floor of our two-story house.
I ran to the kitchen to the sliders that led to our backyard.
I can see a brightness coming through the blinds of the sliders.
I can tell my dream is about to end. I know I’m about to wake up, which leads me to an anxiousness that only a child would understand.
Mom?
Pop?
Dave?
Anybody?
I don’t want to lose anything else. I don’t want to miss another minute. But more, I don’t want to miss the chance of seeing their faces or hearing their voices.
Sometimes, I dream about the pond in Eisenhower Park. I used to fish there when I was a little boy. I walked to the park by myself, which is unheard of now.
Kids don’t go anywhere these days, at least not alone or without their cell phones.
My childhood home was on a main street. But I knew how to cross the streets and get to where I wanted. I knew where to go. I knew not to talk to strangers, and I knew that I had to be home in time for supper.
The park is empty in these dreams. Perhaps the pond looks differently from the way it looks now. Maybe the pond has taken on the state of a dream face, which means that the pond and the bushes or the surroundings are altered by my imagination and differ from the way they are in reality.
Either way, I know where I am.
I am small in this dream.
I have an opened can of corn, which has fallen to the side and corn is around the can. This is what I used for bait when I fished for sunfish.
Everything in this dream is quiet and peaceful, or innocent, like the days of an unencumbered and unmolested youth.
It’s funny . . .
I never open doors in my dreams, att least not that I can remember. I pass through doorways. Or maybe I don’t.
I never turn a light switch on or off in my dreams,
at least I don’t think so.
As for words or talking — I’m not sure how that works.
I know what the people in my dreams are trying to say. I know they are talking to me, but I’m not sure if I actually hear them speak or that I somehow know what they are trying to say..
Maybe I do know . . .
Maybe I do hear people speak . . .
Like the time I had a dream my Old Man drove to see me from Heaven. He was driving his old work truck, which was famous in my family for reasons I cannot go into right now.
This was a two-tone colored Dodge. Big. Black and silver with a maroon interior and a stick shift.
I remember the truck very well.
I was sitting in the back seat. Just a kid.
The Old Man opened a beer for me because he had to get back. I took a sip and then I realized that I don’t drink. Somehow, I wasn’t really a kid, just small and looking upwards, in awe of him, my Old Man.
Perhaps my size and youth is the way I define how I saw him. Not as a man, but as my Father.
I told my Old Man how I messed up. And this, I remember.
He told me it was okay because the beer was Sapporo. “It’s a Japanese beer,” said The Old Man, as if to cancel out the alcohol with an international loophole, and then he said, “It doesn’t count.”
I remember that one.
I also remember the laughs this got in my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.
The Old Man didn’t know much about sobriety. He never saw me the way I am.
But he knew that I used to regret that I never had the chance to have a beer with him.
Just a Father and his son, a few beers, and a good time.
I woke up before I could take another sip . . .
Most of my dreams are more elusive, like the dreams I have when I run through every room in my childhood home to see if anyone’s around.
Everything has a timeline.
Everything changes.
People change.
Life changes and so do the landscapes of our old familiar neighborhoods,
It would be nice though. You know?
It’d be nice to reunite with everyone and be able to see my family —
together again.
The Written Addiction 