Dreaming with Bean

DreamingFeelingSeeingKnowing

It’s such an incredible conversation, late at night, to share with Michelle as we sit on the couch, snuggled up against the wee hours’ drowsiness. Neither of us wants to end our rare moment of uninterrupted sharing, and the minutes tick steadily by until the clock on the electronics is blurry and unreadable. But we keep going, grasping and grabbing on to each of those minutes, determined to squeeze every usable, sharable second – not letting any be wasted. When you’re separated by a fourteen hour drive from a person who is a part of your heart and soul, and whom you have held onto through the very darkest of nights and longest of days, there simply is no time to fritter away.

Not that our chat is always serious, by no means. We reminisce about the many hours we spent in the car during her middle school and high school years, driving back and forth to school and work. Remembering the drive~ the gray barn covered with birdhouses that hid in the fog, remembering the deer at the end of our road – the magic of our mornings and always the meandering way home… We laugh over the sweetness of Kash’s own little way of wrapping adults much larger than him around his tinyboy fingers. We discuss the future preschool she considers for her precocious son who asks to play with octagons (and he is not yet three years old!)

The vulnerability of young motherhood is enhanced by late hours, shared concerns and utter love for a towheaded toddler who daily reminds all of us of the goodness of God, and that miracles happen. We agree that we are grateful for our challenges, no matter how large or small, and that gratitude should be a cultivated skill. Dreams do come true, although sometimes at a cost.

What we find most challenging is listening though, not to each other, but just listening. How often are we to hear and we find that we cannot? Is that what dreams are for, so that during our sleep when we are quiet we will feel what we cannot hear? And by so feeling, can we then see the pathway to take? It is difficult to answer that question but just for the night, I think I know, because just for the night, I have Michelle all to myself. Fourteen hours is too far, and blurry the clock may be, but for this night I will listen with all my might for every second that she is here, because .. well, just because. It has to do with dreams~