Harvest of Dreams

Don't you wonder how the fabulous things you do in a dream can disappear so quickly the minute you wake up?

Sometimes I waken with the certain knowledge that I've been speaking another language or have composed some amazing music. I'll have written a short story or delivered a lecture, and POOF! it's gone, and I can't get it back. It's like trying to pick up mercury.

(For those of us of a certain age, when a thermometer broke during childhood, we got to chase the mercury around on the floor, trying to pick it up. Don't even bother to tell me how dangerous and poisonous it is. It's probably why I can't remember my dreams.)

Dreams have probably shaped history sometimes, since people used to --- and maybe still do --- use them as a form of divination. Battles fought, monarchs overthrown, journeys undertaken all may have happened at the bidding of dreams. And who knows? Maybe they were onto something.

When I valued sleep less than I do now, I used to keep a notebook by my bed to write down dreams for the purpose of capturing their insight. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and write, then go back to sleep for more. Sometimes I would try like mad to hang onto it in the morning long enough to scribble down the essence. When I run across these old spiral notebooks now, they are about as interesting as listening to your roommate in college tell you her dream over breakfast. Uh-huh. Ok.

Needless to say, I've developed a keen interest in how the brain works, and doesn't work, since dealing with demented parents for the past 14 years. I have more than a passing interest in understanding my own brain in an effort to escape that fate myself. A few years ago I enrolled in a study at Duke in the Alzheimers's Research Center, to follow me for an indefinite period and be evaluated every year for signs of Alzheimers. Unfortunately, the funding dried up ----- science? who needs funding for science? Let's just pray it away! --- so I no longer have the assurance of being evaluated regularly, as well as the opportunity to contribute in a small way to the research. I also participated in a couple of shorter research projects, one of which involved having a functional MRI. At the end, I asked, in a joking way, if I could take home a picture of my brain. She not only obliged, but explained to me what I was looking at and assured me that my hypothalamus was "nice and plump". Nothing like a plump hypothalamus, that's what I always say.

So I have my brain framed and on my dresser. Somehow that's reassuring. I know that it's firing and I actually feel more clear-headed, teachable and "with it" than I have for years, right now. Even the stress of being the fulltime caretaker for a demented Alzheimer's parent is nothing like the wretched condition of being a public school teacher. That's pretty sorry, when you think about it.

Having my brain on the dresser is a reminder that my possibilities are endless, as long as I don't give up. I still have my faculties, such as they are. I can still think and speak and write, communicate with others, come up with new ideas. And I still have my dreams, both waking and sleeping.

Now, let me tell you about the dream that woke me up this morning....