The Dao of St. Paul and Other Songs

This morning, Jesse went to work early and I ended up sleeping late, Oliver and Gracie curled up on Jesse’s side of the bed, the sky outside overcast. I dreamed I had some sort of terminal disease—cancer, or some other time bomb inside. And I was living at a hospital, and Jesse would come visit me with our two kids (a boy and a girl, and, strangely, both blond), but we were fighting. I insulted him. He brought groceries and refused to carry them into my room, which had a little mini-fridge and was more like a dorm room than a hospital room, though it did have one of those tilty beds. I carried them myself, to spite him. But then our dream selves softened, buckled a little under the pressure. Yes, we loved each other. No, we didn’t want to fight. But we were in over our heads. We were selfish and clumsy and doing our best. We were neither heroes nor villains.

The dream was oddly slow-paced and naturalistic. We made lunch. We tried to find time alone. We talked about what on earth we were going to do—two kids to raise, and me in the hospital. And who knows what next. Our mothers came to help. A package of blue cheese went bad. The kids played in the hospital halls. A new medicine made me hallucinate that I was floating. My hair was short again. Days passed. This was life.

And when I woke up, I wasn’t sure what to make of it. I was neither happy nor sad. It was a storyline abruptly cut off, and I’ve no idea what happened to us, to our dream selves. I don’t know how it all ends.