The one (stress ONE) nice thing about complete lack of sleep is that it allows me to dive quickly and deeply into dreamland. I've read that one way to tell if you are sleep deprived is to know if you fall asleep and immediately start to dream. If you do, it means your body has figured out that the only way you will get any REM time is to do it right away because you aren't going to sleep long enough to do it the regular way - falling in and out of a sleep cycle.
I do this almost nightly. I fight sleep laying with my son when he goes to bed and I often find myself weaving between reality and dreamland. I crash hard the minute I climb into bed. I dream a lot. I remember almost all of them. They don't always make sense, but a lot of the time they do. I dream often about water, not very often about my kids. I spoke French in one recently. I studied French in college but was never fluent nor have I used it for years. For some reason, that part of my brain was engaged that night in a way I could not have used that well while I was awake.
I was talking about my dreams with a friend recently. I asked her, do you think if you dream about someone that you know that in turn, they are dreaming about you? Is it a way for your subconsciousness to connect? She didn't think so, she thought it meant the person you were dreaming about was going through something and you were picking up on it. I wonder about this a lot. I still hold to my theory that on some level, some of the time, dreams are a way for people, your spirit or your whatever, to connect with another. You know when you've had one of those dreams. You can feel it.
I always was connected to my grandmother in a way you can't explain. She was southern and delicately beautiful and had a fascinating life story. I'm more like her than I am my own mother, much in the way that I think my son's temperment favors my mother's over mine. When I was a child we would go down south every summer to visit my grandma's family. Her father, from what I know, was not a nice man, but he must have been very charming because he had four wives and she had a slew of step-brothers and sisters. During those visits there were some family I knew and recognized, but more I didn't. Her sister's house would be brimming with folks to welcome her home and kids and food and people coming and going. They called her Opal. I thought it was a nickname until I was old enough to learn that when she moved up here and married my grandfather she changed her name.
She's been gone eight years, but she's been on my mind frequently as of late. Partly because I look at this baby I have who is literally like sunshine and wish she had met him. Because I saw my ninety-one year old grandfather, her husband, (her second one, no one knows anything about the first, or if they do they are not talking) last weekend and his health is failing. She used to say she was 'mountain people', people with little sustenance but high intuition. Maybe it's because I had an astrologer once tell me I was likely psychic as a child but lost it as I grew up and I really think that's true because sometimes I swear I can feel her in the room. You could explain that sensation by pointing to how I just saw my grandpa or recently had a child, but then again, maybe you can't.
Last night I dreamt the present day me was in Virginia, at my grandmother's sister's house. I was standing outside with two cousins. (We always referred to everyone's kids as cousins but were just somehow related through step families) Are you Randy? I asked one, not sure who he was. Randy and I were close in age and I remember playing with him as a kid. No, I'm Westley he said. Can I give you a hug? I asked. He looked a little uncomfortable. I know we don't really know each other, I said, but hugging you makes me feel like I'm hugging my grandma. He opened his arms and I hugged him, but it was her. The embrace was hers and it felt all encompassing and warm and familiar and sweet.
I let go and I was awake.
