Every once in a long great while, I will have a dream that is so absolutely strange, that I will have to get up and write it down.
That happened just now, and I have gotten up at 4:00 AM in to write it down.
I can only put it down to the Chili.
Right before bed I had a strong desire for a bowl of Chili. My wife said not to do that, it would hurt my stomach. Even my little girl, 13, said the same.
But I am a man, sixty years old, and by God nobody was going to stop me from having that Chili, even a heart surgeon.
But even though I am stupid, I was smart enough to take an Alka Seltzer before I went to sleep, thinking that would counter the upset stomach I was sure to have in the night.
I went to bed thinking I was ok.
I drifted off into sleep.
And at some point being awake and being asleep melded into one, became one. Not all one, not all the other, but for a moment, the same.
And I remember thinking my mother is so far away in the dark house I was sleeping in, I would have difficulty finding her if she needed me, or I needed her.
It was a tad bit scary, but I told myself I am a big man now, I would be ok... without her.
I folded my pillow in half as I do, lay my head on it, and at that point I went headlong into the dream.
And in the dream I could not sleep and I began to hear a voice. But I wasn’t afraid. And decided to talk back to it, just for fun, as I could not understand what it was saying, and to show I wasn’t afraid of it..
And as it talked and I talked back I got up on my knees and put my ear to the wall as it seemed the voice was coming from the other side of the wall.
It was. And now I could hear it clearly.
And it was telling me it was a spirit and it could help me talk with my father.
I laughed. I didn’t believe it.
But I could see through a circular hole, yes, like a tunnel, only not so, that there was light on the other side. Something was over there in the night.
At that moment my mother came into the room behind me and asked me what I was doing, and I told her and she broke out into a great happiness at the thought that she might be able to talk with my father again, as she loved him like I haven’t seen a woman love a man since.
I have said this before but I will say it again now, that she loved him so much that when he died she would go lay on his grave just to be near him.
And when it came her turn to die she wanted to die, so she could be with him.
The spirit knew I wanted to talk to my father, and I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to tell him, "You see how much your wife loves you, and are you ready to admit that some of the reasons I am so unhappy are because of you, and how much you didn’t seem to love me?"
But I was skeptical of the spirit, and I said, "You are going to have to tell us something to prove that you really are a spirit. And I further said, "What State was my mother born in?" (The correct answer is Tennessee.)
And the spirit said, "That’s a hard one, because you don’t really understand. There are many of us here and he has to come forward."
I had heard that before many years ago, when there was some psychic on television. Anderson, was I believe his name. I haven’t thought of him in years.
The spirit has to be called out before it can answer.
At that moment a friend from work, a black man named Jessie, who has been retired about six years, appeared to my left.
Now Jessie was a great guy, probably still is, very happy and funny, but he was also a bit of a con man. He told me a story one time, because he trusted me. I don’t think he had told the story to many, if any other people at all.
People do that to me quite often. Even strangers. I seem to be the kind of person they can trust without having to know me.
But Jessie’s story caused me to lose a lot of respect for him. In that story he had worked for a white motel owner when he was a young kid in the fifties, here in the South in Alabama, I believe in Alabama City.
And one day a room was left open and he went in and there was a guest’s billfold laying on the bed or dresser, and he took some money out of it. When the guest saw the money was gone he went to the motel owner and accused Jessie. Jessie was called in front of the man and asked if he had taken the money.
Now at this point the story would have a great, if not happy ending, if Jessie had of said "Yes," I took the money. Confessed, got his punishment, and learned his lesson. And became a better person.
But that isn’t what happened.
Jessie lied, the motel owner trusted and believed him, and told the guest to get the hell off of his property.
I never quite felt the same after hearing that story. I guess I felt if he had lied to a former guy who believed and trusted him, he might lie to me as well.
Now here he was in my dream, a man I haven’t thought of in at least a year or so, maybe two, and he was saying he could help.
I said, "You mean you could become a conduit between the spirit and me?"
And he said "Yes," but first he would have to lie down on the bed. And he did.
And I was thinking "There is the con artist, wanting something on the bed," because another thing Jessie always wanted, was the women.
Now Jessie was a big man. Bigger than my dad. And when he had lain down he was suddenly covered with a white patterned comforter, much like the one that I really sleep under.
And that comforter rose up in the shape of a smaller man, and I knew immediately it was my father, and it said nothing, but floated the two steps to me and gave me a hug.
And that is very much like my father would do. He wouldn’t talk much to me but he might give me a hug in his later years, when he first saw me after I was away from him for awhile. As when I was in the Navy.
And I was happy and knew that it was really him and was hugging him back.
But I wanted to ask him, "Are you in hell?" which is where I have always assumed he would be.
Because he was a little like Jessie, a more than a bit of a woman’s man, and a bit of a con artist of a different type than Jessie as well. But happy, and funny just like Jessie.
He loved life and did not want to die when his time came.
And when his time was near he was very proud that the hospital staff in Birmingham had put him in the very same room George Wallace had been in during his stay there.
He was a Wallace Democrat. And a Big Jim Folsom man. And anybody else who was for the poor white man - or who said they were.
I remember I was doing dad’s taxes once for him when he was selling used cars for fun after he retired from the Army and a second career, and he looked at the figures I had and said, "Take a hundred dollars off each row."
Which I did.
That was my dad at the time.
And though I wasn’t so much then,
Now I’m a lot like him.
I didn’t like my dad, but I did love him.
But he didn’t answer the question I wanted to ask him, but never did. Instead he said the strangest thing.
Something he would never say to me, as we never talked about race relations.
We never talked much about anything.
He was a good old boy man with hundreds and hundreds if not thousands of friends,
And I was the guy he got mad at one day and angrily said "the problem with you is you’ve got to much education."
But he said simply this now as he hugged me. And I could see he was smiling. Happy to here and able to tell me something - but nervous about having to go back to the place he had just come from... to tell me this:
He said, "Black is better."
I was taken completely aback by the statement.
And as I was wondering in what context he meant this, he added, "... It’s a better neighborhood."
Then I woke up. And I wondered, what the hell did THIS mean?
Now you should know that my father has been dead since 1989 - twenty years - and my mother has been dead since 1995 - fourteen years.
And I rarely think of either one of them very much, because I try not to. I accept they are dead, they are not coming back. And I will very probably never see them again.
I believe this as I don’t believe there is actually a single verse in the Bible that says we will be reunited with our loved ones and KNOW them, as is popularly believed, and I have read the whole thing twice, and the listened to the new testament many, many times.
But maybe I’m wrong.
But as I write these very words, my backyard dog is starting to bark, just as he does, when something comes into the yard that shouldn’t come. Or that he doesn’t understand.
And a neighbor’s dog does, too. As does one of my house dogs. And then the other.
There ARE things we don’t understand. Like spirits, and dreams. And death, and even living.
My wife and I both believe in spirits... and have had several experiences with what we believe were a few.
I won’t go into them now.
As a matter of fact, I don’t feel like writing any further, or even trying to understand my dream any more.
I’ll leave it to you to decide:
Was it the chili?
Or could it be that there is a place where black is better? A better neighborhood?
And my dad, who I never knew to have a black male friend, has found it.
And could it be - could it exist - because of all the patience and non violence and forgiveness blacks have shown
after all that white people in general have done to them?
I have no idea.
I go out into the yard in the dark to see what the dogs are all barking about.
There is nothing there that I can see.
I come back in and the dogs stop.
Some things just can’t be seen, can’t be known.
I fix another Alka Seltzer
And go back to bed.
I’ve had a hug from my father after twenty years.
And real or not,
I feel better.
And sad,
that there won’t be any more.
In college, I studied the meaning and understanding...
Of dreams.
I have thought about it
and I believe I know what each part of the dream means.
But what I believe it means is no longer important
once my words are on paper.
It’s what you think the dream means
that is now
relevant.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009