Water Dreams

The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.

—Okakura Kakuzo

Water was my element long before I knew I was a water sign. There are photos of me, three, on my grandfather’s fishing boat, laughing at the chop of the waves on a windy day. “You loved it,” Mom said.

My first movie—we rarely went to a movie theatre—happened when we still lived in Queens and Daddy was on a boat in Florida. Mom took my brother and I to see “Singing in the Rain.” I must have been eight, my brother five. As we walked home from the Woodside station it began to rain softly. I was thrilled and danced down the sidewalks, singing, singing in the rain.

Water is often where my brain goes for its metaphors when I’m sleeping. Whatever its preferences awake, the sleeping mind is quite satisfied with clichés and willing to use the same ones over and again.

I’m in a rowboat, slowly filling with water. I have a tiny paper Dixie cup, bail and bail, my arms aching. All the others in the boat lounge indifferently.

To my mind, water is also the symbol of overload.

That dream came during difficult times, in my early thirties. I would not do those years again. There have been some such water dreams since, mainly during my teaching career, but less intense, more like one that surfaced recently.

“Surfaced,” because things do surface from water and also because dreams often don’t care to be recalled, duck back to the unconscious the moment I open my eyes. I wonder what they’re keeping from me.

I’m organizing unfamiliar rooms in a house apparently mine. Piles of junk and trash to sort, floors to clean. I’m working hard, wearing out, when muddy water starts oozing under the door, creeping over the carpet.

In May, I committed to teach a class this school year, the first since I retired five years ago. In July, I was selected to translate a Mexican biography, my first major translation job, something I’ve worked toward for five years. The book was delayed: the first chapters arrived late in August, just as I started my class. In October, Phil had his amputation. Muddy flood, indeed.

Colorado poet David Rothman said recently: “consciousness cures most ills.” If I did not at least partly believe that, I wouldn’t have sought therapy in the difficult years of my thirties, nor would I seek insight from dreams. This sort of dream is an early warning. “Yep,” I nod, waking from that muddy water, “time for a break.” Sometimes it doesn’t take much. On that occasion I took a long, hot bath. Water therapy.

Phil’s gaining walking confidence—gait training, the physical therapist calls it—and has been cleared to drive again. He manages stairs. He takes himself to his own doctor appointments. He walks with a cane. January 23, exactly three months since surgery, we go out to dinner for the first time. Our neighbor Jenn says he’s inspiring. She’s right. The stress dreams fade away.

But, Phil’s growing independence is also disturbing. Partly, I’m not done adjusting to one change before another comes along. Partly, I panic the first time he does anything by himself, as if he were a child. As he drove away the first time, I felt a weave of anxiety and indignation. Catching myself in the midst of those feelings was a rare fish, glittering a wink above the surface before slipping back into the deep. Such flashes of consciousness, however they arrive, aid the constant effort to adjust to our constantly changing world.

Now Phil’s gone to an appointment miles from here, leaving me alone in the house the longest I’ve been alone for three months. I spend the time worrying about how he’ll manage without me. Finally he calls, appointment done. He’s at the store. Do I need anything?

“What? You’re walking around a store by yourself?” I exclaim.

“Not yet,” he replies calmly. “When I go in there I might collapse, but if I do, I’ll call you right after I call 911.”

I press “end call” and to calm myself, drink a glass of water.

 

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8 Responses to Water Dreams

  1. Bob Jaeger says:

    Beautiful, Pat, simply beautiful. Your images bring my own memories flooding in—a mark, I think, of superior writing. And I think there are beginnings for a number of very good poems in there.

  2. Kitty says:

    Love, love love the rare fish!

  3. Jana Clark says:

    So glad to hear of Phil’s wonderful recovery. Speaks to our resilience!! Yours is also on display in this piece of writing!! Most of the time I’m just sick of dreams. Often I wake up more tired than when I went to sleep. I guess that part of us never retires!

  4. winnie barrett says:

    Pat, yes, I must remember this wonderful insight from Okakura Kakuzo.

    And your dreams are those “Stop. Pay attention” messages to yourself in such creative metaphors. Aren’t dreams wonderful? Even the not-so-pleasant ones.
    So happy to know Phil is doing so well and you can let go of your worries. Life is becoming beautiful once more.
    Love to you both,
    Winnie

  5. Reading your blog I remembered a quote from Bruce Lee:
    “Move smoothly around your obstacles,
    then move in with the force of water and breath.

  6. Had I not seen Phil tooling around Su Teatro quite (well, maybe slightly less than) comfortably, I wouldn’t have believed it might be possible so soon after his surgery. He’s one tough artist! Now with a somewhat different gait, but still—somehow—a kind of swagger. Don’t you think?

  7. Gregg Painter says:

    I almost never dream of water. I don’t know why, because I love water, too, and was born in the Year of the Water Dragon, a year that comes around once every sixty years.

    My favorite thing to do when I was young was this: (we would go on several canoe trips in the Ozarks every fall). I would find a rock just the right size to make my buoyancy the same as that of the river (OK, that’s not right, but you know what I mean: I would neither sink nor float.) Then I would take a deep breath and go down some gentle rapids with my eyes open. Pure bliss. Exploring live caves, eating wild watercress from the cold pure springs, finding tiger salamanders under rotten logs, catching soft-shelled turtles – by their leathery rear side to avoid getting bitten…all those things were part of the joy of our family “float trips,” but becoming one with the water was the best.

    Glad to hear Phil is getting better and getting around!

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