A Dream

 Last night, I had a dream that shook me.  It's weird to talk about it, because it was a dream, but sometimes a dream can really shake you.  This one feels different.  Different enough to write down.

In my dream, I was doing day labor for the first time in several years.  I was at a construction site, doing some demolition of sorts.  The plan was to first tear apart the old building, but carefully.  This even included uncovering some laid brick work, tearing the bricks out, and storing them away, saving them to be used later in the construction of the new building, if possible.  When we pulled them out, we brought them over to Morgan Freeman, who was there partially out of publicity and partially because he supported the cause.  After the second load, Morgan told me the foreman wanted me to take care of the cat that had been hiding in the pit under the stairs.  I knelt down and peaked through the floorboards of the steps and saw a cat, but that wasn't all I saw.  I saw a little girl.  An African-American girl.  She saw me and tried to disappear.  But because I was sent to do a job, I went around the stairs, along the side of the house, and found the entryway to this subterranean hideout.  

When I walked in, it looked like a room.  A well-kept room, neat and tidy, with furniture and access to a kitchenette.  Not only were the cat and the girl there, but so was the girl's older sister.  After assuring them that I meant them no harm, they were hesitantly willing to talk to me.  The cat, a black cat, rubbed up against me too, so that probably helped ease their concerns.  I talked to the little girl first, but soon I was talking more to the older sister, who herself was probably still pre-teen, but could at least provide a more in-depth conversation.  I listened as they talked about how they came to be there, how they got the cat, their schooling, everything I could think of.  I just wanted to know everything because I felt for them so much.  Their mother was away at work, their father was in jail for psychological abuse, but the charges were trumped up, and that it never happened.  The cat found them and adopted them when they found this pit.  I remember especially that they took really extra special care of this room in a pit because it was their home.  They weren't lawbreakers, they were U.S. citizens by birth, but they worried that if anyone found the pit, they'd be forced out of what little home they had.  Which, considering I was there for a demolition and construction job of a new building, was perfectly reasonable.  So they took special care of this room, partially out of pride, but also, so that in case they were ever found there, those who found them would see how good of care they took and would either leave them alone or if they had to force them out, would be more inclined to help them find a decent place, since they were clearly of sound mind to keep an orderly domicile like that.

While I talked to them, their neighbors entered, an Asian-American family.  The husband wore a clean, olive-green shirt and khakis, and I could hear the wife and young child, though I didn't converse with them.  The girls I was talking to confirmed they lived there too, shared the kitchenette, and got along well with them.  In this pit.

As dawn approached, and the view outside my real bedroom got lighter and brighter, so too was my awareness that this was a dream, and not real.  Sensing I was on the verge of waking up, I clung to the dream in the last moments and told the girls I had to leave, that the boss would wonder where I was and that I wouldn't get paid if they thought I walked off the jobsite.  But as I felt myself being pulled back to reality, I called out to them and warned them as loud as I could, so their neighbors would also hear me, that I was able to find them, which meant others would find them soon too.  And then I woke up.

I don't know how to unpack this dream, but I can't dismiss it as just a dream.  It feels like there are too many layers of metaphor to ignore.  I don't know what all the dream means, but even if it has no meaning, I can still can't call it just a dream.  I can't say if this dream changed me or will change me, but it feels too significant to not write down for posterity, whatever that posterity may prove to be.  But as I laid in bed pondering this dream, the thought occurred to me that this was not a dream that just anybody could have.  To do the things and have the conversations that I did in this dream are not things that just anyone could do or conversations that anyone could carry with people like those two young girls.  I don't consider myself to be morally superior to anyone--in fact, I know that I'm not--nor do I even consider myself to even be that much of a good man at times, especially in terms of compassion and empathy.  So please don't think I'm trying to present myself as all that.  I can't even credit my own subconscious for conjuring up this episode.  It came from somewhere external; it had to have.  But there are people out there who are incapable of having this kind of dream.  I just had to write this down, because I need a written record of it.  Even now, many of the details of the conversation have disappeared from memory.  And don't ask me why Morgan Freeman was there or why I got to talk to him.  I don't know what else to tell you, except for one thing.  If you ever encounter a person who you believe to be incapable of having a dream like that, once you realize they're incapable of that, flee from them.