Hello, World.
"Last night, again, I dreamed
my children were back at home"
—Philip Levine
Morning comes early, and noisily, these days. Mostly the noise is birdsong, with occasional cars grumbling in the background a mile off on the highway. There's a very brief series of cat noises as one of the outdoor cats demands food and fuss; part meow and part grumble, a clamour is soon over once food is down and the pets and head-scratching is done. Sometimes there's a tractor, or other stranger and more monstrous agricultural implement on a misson. Once in a rare while there's a vehicle going down the road; if I head out of the screen porch I can raise my coffee cup in greeting.
Today there's a new racket. It's reminiscent of frog croaks, but from frogs who've breathed in helium and need oiling besides. It does not sound healthy, and it's a regular and insistent noise that won't be ignored. This is of course the sound of a million baby birds demanding food, in the same way the bloody cat does. It's insistent, the parent birds are wired the same way I am and they fill the need in whatever bird way they have. My groggy science brain tries to recall how that works, and I have that fuzzy memory of that wee birds get fed regurgitated, partly-digested {food}, be it seeds or insects.
I had dreamed a dream, one I remember in that sense with which we remember them – the irritatingly fuzzy sense of shapes and people and place and feeling. It happened in what I call my Dreamscape, a physically-impossible mishmash of places from my youth and imagination. This dream was in an amalgam of Grandma Turner's house and my boarding school, with many dusty backstairs connecting the infeasible floors. My daughter was in one of the rooms playing with a set of toys, a game that I couldn't work out, a game that doubtless made sense to her. I watched as she and the toys wove a narrative I couldn't understand. She was very young, younger than I'd ever known her. The play was elaborate and occupied her full attention; I doubt that even if I'd been in the room I would not have impinged on her sensorium. Besides, I was looking through a wall because that's how dreams work.
The whole scene had a nostalgic feel, and I embraced it. I did so mostly because this was a time before I had met her. She looked to be about four years of age, and she was six when I met her mother, so this was an insight into a child that I had never known. I watched every movement, every facial expression, every bit of body language, and tried to fathom what was developing in this young and fertile mind.
That was all the dream. A child I never knew, playing a game I couldn't possibly grok in a space I couldn't access. I woke to a sense of odd sadness that I hadn't been there to experience her at that stage of her development, and my morning ritual happened in a world of emotional treacle that somewhat slowed my pace. As I sit down on the porch with the snoozing cat and my coffee the feeling slowly turns itself around, as the ballet of sadness pirouettes into another, happier thing.
I call her "daughter", because that's what she became as I grew into her world. She may be "only" my step-daughter in reality, but it's love, not blood, that's thicker than water. Whenever I talk about her, she's my girl as much as she can be. Sometimes she calls me "Poppa" and my heart bursts. That doesn't happen often, and I never expect it, but I know my place in her life and despite my many shortcomings, I know she loves me. But I am chuffed to bits just knowing her.
She's no fledgling now, she's a growed-up woman in a far-away place and I miss her. Texts and shared snippets of life, the occasional (too-rare) phone call are what we have for now. She's not a little girl any more, she's become her gestalt self, greater than anything her mother (and father, and I) put in. In many ways, the student is become the master; I learn as much from her as she does from me. I am in awe of her power as I watch through the walls that separate us. The fascination I feel just now is identical to of my dream, just as frustrating and rewarding. She's a force to be reckoned with, and in the early low beams of sunlight, I am proud as I could possibly be.
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