It Was All Just A Dream
Awakening Just In Time
Awakening From a Dream
I awoke at 4 a.m. this morning. It’s actually the first time this vacation I was up before the sun. There was a time, and not too long ago, that I was always up before the sun, every day, even on vacation. That was before I got the CPAP machine and learned the loveliness of a full night’s sleep, the sanity of achieving REM sleep. I used to only get 4 ½ to 5 hours sleep a night. Those early morning hours were my writing time.
Now, I average closer to 7 hours a night, and can really feel the difference when I only get 6 hours or less. I am much more relaxed and comfortable in my own skin when I get the 7. When I get less, I am more driven, and have to dig a little deeper to find the energy. A part of me likes that sense of being driven, the frenetic attempts to find that energy, which I usually do.
But, I have learned there’s a price to be paid for that. There’s a loss of perspective, and I have come to believe, a bit of “burning the candle at both ends” that eventually demands a price to be paid — a price I’ve come to accept is not worth the result.
There are occasions, though, when I wake up early, and I know I must get up and follow my spirit. This feels like one of those times. I’ll try to recapture the sequence of events that occurred in my waking moments. It feels like it’s important enough to get down in writing, lest I forget.
Kathy was flopping around on the bed, trying to get comfortable. We love this beach condo, but not the bed, so much. For starters, it’s a queen — we’re spoiled with a king at home. It is also too hard for Kathy’s comfort — she struggles to find a comfortable way to sleep in it. She woke me up with her flopping, then I had to go to the bathroom, but she beat me to the bathroom. So, I had to wait.
The Dream — Mom
As I lay there waiting, the dream I was having came back to me. In the dream, both Mom and Dad were still alive, and were with us down here, a part of this annual family reunion that has happened every year since Dad passed in 1996.
From 1997 to 2012, Mom was a key part of this annual reunion. In fact, she came to love it down here so much, she found a place here in 2000, and we moved her down from New Jersey in 2001. She got to spend her last eleven years doing something she’d dreamed of doing her whole life — living by the ocean.
She did love it, too. I’ll never forget walking with her along the beach on Pawley’s Island that first day, while we were still unpacking, and helping her get settled into her new place. We’d taken a break and hit the beach. The way she beamed, the glow in her eyes, without even saying a word — I knew I was walking beside someone who had just stepped into the fulfillment of a lifetime dream. It was a moment with Mom I’ll never forget.
In the dream, I was explaining to Mom how I came to be getting ready to play softball again. She listened to my whole story, of how I had my follow-up virtual colonoscopy a couple weeks ago, with time to think, and realized that maybe I wasn’t done with the softball. She truly listened, in that non-judgmental manner she had learned so effectively in the training she’d had for the crisis hotline she’d directed for 27 years before she retired.
She listened as I explained that Kathy did not support my return to softball, but said she wouldn’t stop me. She may have raised an eyebrow as I spoke, but was ever-so careful not to judge me. When I was finished, she had one question. “Do you think it will all be worth it?”
The Dream — Dad
That really made me think. Dad, on the other hand, who was also there, but somehow had faded out of the dream while I was talking to Mom, but now reentered the scene, made no bones about how he felt. He was never as good as Mom with the non-judgmentalism, though he certainly tried. What he was good at was calling out bullshit when he saw it, judgement or not, and letting the chips fall where they would.
But he did it without saying a word. I guess it’s like that when you’re a dream figure, not really real, but very much there, nonetheless. What he did was show me a scene, almost like watching a movie on a screen.
It reminded me of the time he tricked me into coming to an AA meeting with him, saying he needed help with the projector he was lugging to show the 16 mm film, something called “Chaulk Talk” with Father Martin, a popular recovered alcoholic who ran a rehab in Maryland, and had produced this famous film that helped a lot of alcoholics. That was when I was 18 and home from Navy Boot Camp, right before I went on a four year binge of heavy drinking and heavy drug use that brought me to my knees at age 22, just after my discharge.
In the dream, I watched the scene of when I was making the decision between staying in the machine shop job I had at the time, or taking the clerical job that had been offered by the USDA in Philadelphia. I knew this scene well. I had really wanted to stay in the machine shop job, but both Kathy and my Dad had advised me to consider taking the government job. Both felt there was more of a future in that one, even though the machine shop job suited my current needs a little better.
Desire to Retire
I’m still in the government job, these 35 years later, with an option to retire at any time. I am more and more desirous of retiring. It’s getting harder and harder for me to continue working. I just feel like I’ve done what I needed to do there, and I should be moving on to the next thing. But, that’s another story.
Reconsideration
So, in these waking moments, remembering this odd dream, a really rare one where both Dad and Mom were present (which never happens) — I thought about my decision to return to playing softball.
While it had immediately caught my spirit on fire, and I had been excited about it from the moment I thought about it, a few other things were going on.
First off, Kathy made it clear that she did not, and would not, support the decision. She wouldn’t stop me — she just wouldn’t support it. I’d written that off as feeling like she never supported my playing in the first place. That’s not really true — she had. What had worn her support down to a frayed thread was my rapid escalation from playing 20 games a year, to playing 120, and the number of freak injuries that started happening as I got older.
Family Feedback
Down here in Debordieu, I’ve gotten some more direct feedback about my decision, from a couple of siblings, and a couple of siblings-in-law.
“I’m going to have trouble sleeping, knowing you’re out there playing again.”
“I heard this nasty rumor on facebook that you’re going to play softball again — really?”
“Isn’t there something else you could do, besides playing softball, to get in shape again?”
“That’s just crazy. Why would you do that?”
Deception
While doing my best to remain oblivious to all of this feedback, I’ve been sneaking out to the Batting Cages since we’ve been down here. I went twice, hitting 120 pitched balls each time, trying to get that sweet spot back in my swing. I got called out on it last night — in a gentle way, but my sneaking hadn’t been sneaky enough. She knew. I’m still trying to figure out if she’s been reading my diary again, or if something else clued her into my deception. Maybe she could just tell by my sneaking around. I normally don’t sneak around, but I have been down here.
That was the other thing that had happened when I was playing all those games. The game became more important than anything else — even my relationship to my wife. I was willing to sacrifice the honesty and trust we’d built up in our relationship, for the game. For a silly old game, one that I loved to play, but that was, in the end, just a game.
Coin Flip
Any way, I got the message. Thanks Mom. Thanks Dad. Thanks Mary, Chris, Jim and Dorothy. All of this had gone on in the span of about two minutes, while I was waiting for Kathy to get done with the bathroom. I even flipped a coin (on my phone’s coin flip App) — heads I play, tails I don’t. It came up tails. The universe wasn’t even cooperating with my decision. It appeared I was on my own.
And the Final Decision Is…
I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid — I won’t be returning to the softball fields, after all. It was all much ado about nothing. But, the difference is — before, I’d walked away because of injuries, a brain tumor and chronic vertigo attacks. I’d been forced out of the game I loved to play. I’d intentionally retired after that, knowing that if I didn’t, I’d be right back out there as soon as signs of health had returned. I decided it was time to move on, so I retired. I didn’t realize I still had a spark of my spirit that wasn’t ready to really retire. It revealed itself the other week, when I was preparing for my virtual colonoscopy.
Now that I’ve taken that dream out for a walk, and seriously reconsidered my decision to retire four years ago, and my subsequent recent decision to end that retirement, I am now at peace with my final decision. I’m not going to play, after all.
It was all just a dream.
