riding piggy back and playing catch and tickles and bubble bath... we
talked about children incessantly, while we were still dating even, and
realizing, among the comfort we found in each other's company and the
interest we had in each other's potential, that we shared this dream,
this all-encompassing dream of children, of family, we were soon
engaged. and all the while having spontaneous conversations about how
if our child should come into our room late at night, dragging a teddy
bear or stuffed rabbit, and look up at us with those big big eyes, why
yes we'd just have to scoop him up and place him between us and we
could all stay up and watch movies, and oh buttered popcorn in bed
wouldn't be such a major sin after all.
Only to find that our children wouldn't sleep in the first place,
preferred to play with spatulas and their fingers while ignoring the
plethora of toys at their disposal, wouldn't tolerate us looking at
them directly much less initiate eye contact, would never actually come
seeking us out because they didn't regard us as company (perhaps
objects in their world sometimes but not often as people), didn't want
to watch movies unless it was the same 30 min video they'd seen a
million times before and of course that had to be playing non-stop, on
continual repeat, even if they weren't in the room, and good god
popcorn? they'd hardly touch it, much less eat it, and the smell of it
was enough to set them off, oversensitive as they are.
At first it was more like a nightmare, but we got help and started to
sort things out and things settled down somewhat... but the time still
came when we realized that our dream was not ever going to come true...
and we had to deal with that...
Then the sun rises and you realize that you have before you a new
dream, a different dream but still a human one, a new dream worth
living for and worth dying for as well. and the loss of the other dream
fades into twilight at the dawn...
But when you are not at your best, and the world has worn you down, and
you start to doubt yourself and the meaning of it all, it suddenly hits
you again, out of nowhere --- the loss of the first dream. and you feel
it as if it where the first time, it courses through you as if just
right now that dream were dying, dying all over again, and nothing you
can do will save it.
And part of you shouts, but there is another dream! there is still a dream!
But it is not the first one, and it never can be. you can have a
million other dreams, but that first one is still lost. that part of
you is still dead. and nothing will change that.
This sums up how I feel very well these days, I think:
A Dream Within A Dream Edgar Allan Poe
Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep - while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
