I probably shouldn't have been surprised to have received a visit from the departed. After all, they say the veil between the worlds is thin at this time of the year.Yesterday I'd put Josie down for a nap in her crib at the foot of the bed. "You lie down too, Meema! On the big bed."
Well, okay. I was sleepy and the room was warm as I'd built a fire in the little wood stove. I'll just rest my eyes, a bit, then sneak out once she goes to sleep, I told myself.
And then my late mother-in-law and my mother, also late, came to the door to see Josie.
At first I told them not to talk so loud, as Josie was asleep. But they were insistent. And now she was waking up. So I said, "Look, Josie, it's-" then suddenly realized she'd never met them and had no name for them. So I used the names her daddy had for them, "... it's Gran and Virginia."
After which the dream devolved into an emergency situation involving a leg of lamb in the microwave (not something I'd ever do) and grease pouring out and dripping off the walls of the pantry where the microwave lives in real life. A grease fire about to happen.
And then the phone (once there was a landline in the pantry) rang, and someone began a long litany of complaints about the writing class (not mine) they were taking.
"Are you learning anything from it, however indirect?" I asked, just before I woke up.
I lay there pondering about the dream. And wondering if I'd learned anything from it, however indirect.
Neither my mother nor my mother-in-law really approved of me, and our relationships were less than ideal. And they didn't much like each other either. But lying there thinking about the dream, I realized that they are both a part of Josie. (As are her six other great grandparents. And her sixteen great-great grandparents and her thirty-two great great grandparents . . .)
And maybe, in her, are all these differences reconciled.
Maybe. At any rate, the dream made me feel more warmly about those two. Which was a nice gift on the Day of the Dead.
