Dreams

I had the most vivid dream last night. When I was much younger, I kept a journal of all my dreams. It was interesting to read and see what my imagination managed to come up with. Some of the dreams were very life like, to the point where I couldn't tell what was real and what was not. For example, there was the dream, in the midst of a transition to having a step family, that my stepmom was pregnant with the son my dad never had and my room was to be the baby's room. I kept close tabs on my stepmom's stomach in the weeks that followed. Others were clearly my imagination gone wild, with colorful characters and zany places, like the dream I recently had that was set in a new city called "Washingago" or "Chicagington." It was as if Chicago and DC became one city, complete with the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers - and Lake Michigan. Still others gave insight into problems I was working through, offering new perspectives and even solutions.

But last night... I was in the Peace Corps, in a place I knew in Africa. I was a health volunteer, which I listed as my second choice on the application. Lately, I've taken to staring at cute kids in the grocery store more than usual; I love kids and volunteer with kids at a local homeless shelter. There were three cute kids in the dream, one of which I have met in real life, and I was watching them as part of my volunteer work. The earth was dusty and red. My place of work was a simple concrete single-room building. I felt deeply content in the dream with the work I was doing and life in general. When I woke up this morning, I half expected to wake up to the same sounds as in the dream, the sound of a busy African morning. But, alas, what I heard was just the hum of my air conditioner on a normal DC weekend morning.