Dreams

 

The bible talks about how “your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” This seems very prophetic indeed.  For the last few weeks I have been having very vivid dreams. I am not under any unusual stress that I am aware of other than the stress of winter.  Now I have always been one to dream vividly. From my late 20’s to my mid 40’s I seldom had a dream I can remember. I have had many instances of dreaming as a child that later came to pass. I would dream weird stuff like catching a big fish behind our house in the river or hitting a homerun in a specific baseball game.  These would then happen and I would have a déjà vu moment.

As a young child I had a very vivid imagination. My imagination was every bit as vivid as Ralphie in the Christmas Story movie. I would imagine all sorts of scenarios for anything that was going on in my life. My brothers didn’t do this. They were always making fun of me for it. I knew I was different from them in many ways. I was always filled with “the what if” ideation and it caused me to often be hesitant in action in comparison to them. I was always thinking of ways to do stuff differently or the myriad of outcomes that could ensue as well as being awkward in social situations. I also dreamed so much it was almost intrusive in my waking life because I would remember the dreams and dwell on them.

The earliest dream I can remember was when I was about 3 or 4 years old. We had moved to Detroit and I was sitting on the stairs that lead down into our basement. It was only about 8 steps and they lead to our laundry room and the door to the back yard. But I was sitting there looking down those steps watching my oldest brother, who was 15 or so, use the washing machine. The back door was open and in walks a large bear.  I was frozen and could not speak nor could I move. My brother had not seen the bear and had his back to the stairway. The bear slowly made its way up the stairs taking its time as it stepped on each step. I still was frozen unable to speak or move and the bear continued. This continued for what seemed like an eternity until the bear made it up to me as I struggled to speak or move. Finally, the bear was upon me and I was finally able to scream. In my dream I let out the most blood curdling scream that a 4 yr old could muster. Turns out it wasn’t just in my dreams. I had awakened the entire house. Both of my brothers, 9 and 15 with whom I shared a room, were awakened as well as mom and dad. The entire house was summoned forth. After mom got me calmed down I was able to go back to sleep and awoke the next day in my own bed with the dream still fresh in my mind.

This dreaming went on for the next 18 yrs or so. Many of the dreams had meanings and some even came true later, though I often did not remember the dream until the action occurred. Some dreams took 10 years to come true but the incident happened just the same. Most of the dreams were mundane things like opening a door to a surprise or finding something I had lost. At 18 I dreamed of a girl I would date in college although I hadn’t went to college yet nor had I applied to a college. We dated for an entire semester my sophomore year in college, a full 2 years after dreaming about her. I even dreamed her name. The dreams were so vivid that I can still remember them plainly.

In my 20’s the dreams stopped, or at least the ones I can remember. I really didn’t dream much. Oh I would have the occasional dream that I could remember upon waking but within an hour that dream was gone and I could no longer remember the details. This carried on into my mid 40’s. But in my 40’s it is like the dreams started coming back. I started to have recurring dreams, dreams about events that had already happened. These dreams were things that I wished had never happened. These were hard dreams that I would almost chalk up to trauma dreams or some type of PTSD. I haven’t had one of those for some time now. However, ever since that day my dreaming brain has been re-awakened.

Before we were even considering buying a homestead my brain was telling me about a place where we were going to buy that had a curve to get into the driveway that you couldn’t turn into with a trailer except from one direction. I dreamed of that driveway multiple times over the course of 3 yrs. I had always planned to stay on the family place we had in Evarts and do some sort of community service type work after I retired. I have considerable skill with grant writing and thought I could use this to help improve my community. But I kept having this recurring dream about us buying a homestead. The house in my dreams looked nothing like the house we bought but the driveway is identical. Also, the way the hill is shaped is also identical.  Is it chance? Is it a self fulfilling prophecy? Did I buy this place because it looked similar to the place in my dreams? Or were my dreams telling me where to be? I have more thoughts on this a little later.

 The last few days have been very active dreaming. Last night I was arrested and kicked out of college for starting a riot because I refused a random drug test, because I see it as an invasion of privacy. 5 days ago I had a very vivid dream about the formation of the universe and the roll that primordial black holes played in the creation of our known universe and space time. No I do not take or smoke any drugs psychokinetic of otherwise. Sorry, this is the random stuff that my little brain comes up with. But, I had several recurring dreams at about the same time I was dreaming about us buying a homestead.

Crystal and I are very resilient people. We have weathered many storms. My neurologist called me the master of lifestyle change. I went from being a college administrator, back to faculty member and finally to hobby farmer, reducing my stress load and my multiple sclerosis activity with each change. Back when I had changed to faculty member and was still working full time I started having the dreams about buying a farm and retiring to the country. Actual dreams but not known desires. I chalked them up to dreams about retirement which was looming out in the future. I retired sooner than I have planned but that is a tale for another post. But, I started having these recurring dreams over and over.

These dreams were odd. They were not the types of dreams that I had had before. They were dreams clearly about the future. I had dreamed about the place we would purchase for our retirement. Pretty much everything here at College Hill Farm are spot on with the dreams except the shape of the house. However, the interior of the house is also correct with the dreams. The one part of the dream that has yet come to pass is the last part of the dream. I hope by writing this it will not come to be.

In the dream I am in my 70’s. I don’t know exactly how old I am. I am sitting by a window in my living room. A room that has the exact same furniture that Crystal has in the room right now! Remember I dreamed this 11 years ago or so. I am sitting at the window with a stool and my 30-30 lever action looking out the window. Crystal is not here. I don’t know if she is alive or not but there is the smell of baking bread in the house. The window is open and I am looking through a wide angle scope. There are women and children walking on the road leading to my very long driveway. They are not on the driveway yet. They are very skinny and their cloths are in tatters. Someone in the background is saying “you can feed them or not.” That is where the dream ends and I wake up. I don’t know if it means anything or not. But, this was a recurring dream for me for nearly 6 months in 2012. I planned to teach for 6 more years at this time and retire in 2018. In 2014 we bought College Hill Farm and started the restoration process. Crystal found all the furniture at local flea markets and antique stores and had them redone to her liking, without my input. They are identical to my dream.

So that is my tale. Here we are at College Hill Farm and this is the home in which I plan to die. I will move no more. Now that I have uttered these words I am sure God is listening and laughing. This is exactly what I said about our last home in Evarts. So I utter a prayer that the dream of College Hill Farm is not a completed dream. I hope it “may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!” in the words of Ebenezer Scrooge.

I hope this finds you well and all your good dreams come true. I am no Joseph and God had not given me the power to interpret dreams.  So I make no assumption on what my little brain can think up. I have never been a doomsday kind of believer. I have always been a common sense kind of person. Do I believe dreams come true? Maybe coincidentally they do come true to a point. See, there I go with my little “what if” brain, the scientific part of my brain that requires quantitative evidence where none can be found.

Thus, I try not to take my dreams too much to heart. I am definitely not going back to college so I won’t be starting any riots over drug testing. I was also not around at the formation of the universe but my brain sure was focused in on that since it has been part of my physics research for years. All I know with my waking brain is that Life, like Homesteading, is a Marathon Not a Sprint – Slow Down and Enjoy the ride.    

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