Grandma Dream

Yesterday, Susan D. wrote me an email telling me that a friend from almost thirty years ago, Michael Quigley, died in Sept., 2009. Michael and I became deeply estranged after we'd been close friends. The estrangement is about twenty-four/five years old.

I went to sleep last night thinking I might dream about Michael, hoping that I might dream about all the great times we had going to and renting movies, eating burgers and other similar food at some of our favorite places to eat, talking baseball, loving the 49ers, really loving the Celtics and, most of all, talking about teaching and ideas. Michael was not only a very intelligent man, he was forcefully intelligent, too often overbearingly intelligent, and our conversations remain among the best I've had. Those conversations were deeply formative (not just informative) regarding how to teach, what to teach, and so on.

I didn't dream about Michael.

I dreamed about my Grandma Woolum who died in Nov. of 1991.

In my dream, the snow was deep and the back streets, Courtland, Glass, Empire, as well as Standard and Cincinnati were difficult to drive through, so I parked the car and set out on foot to find Grandma's house.

Grandma hadn't been dead long in my dream. In my dream, as I walked through the snow, I flashed back to seeing her. She was alone. She was bed-ridden. She was full of vitality, memories, stories, and disappointment in my dream's flashback and so she haunted me as I went in search of her house.

Finally, after some trudging, I got oriented and found her house. By the time I reached it, spring had arrived. New flowers in new flower beds, put in by the new owners, were beginning to bloom and the owner had brought a rug out to the front porch it air it out.

Grandma's house had been remodeled. It looked like a miniature church, a contemporary church. The house swept on a curve back toward the alley and then back toward Bridgeport again. It was dramatic. It was far more beautiful and dramatic than her little house could ever have been.

I was stunned.

The new owner was happy to meet Lula Woolum's grandkids. By now, my sisters were with me. I'd been alone, but suddenly they appeared and we marveled at the new house and then, as so often happens, the dream ended.

So I didn't dream about Michael, I don't think. But I loved seeing Grandma's house in its remodeled splendor and loved seeing that it was a part of a renaissance of improvements on East Bridgeport, from Nevada, west to Division.

That's all.