I woke this morning from a dream; a dream that I was still working at the Temple; searching through a stack of papers to find some detail for Beth; going to the sanctuary to make sure the candles were in place; then to an auditorium and outside in the courtyard, a statue and in front of the statue Sara, as a girl of ten or eleven, with her friend, Beth, taking turns at performing cartwheels; their limber backs, long arms, stretched and easy with life, no future but the promise of anything they might imagine; sunlight on the grass and strands of Sara's sunstreaked hair winking with the light, swinging around her cheek as she landed hard on the ground in an imperfect cartwheel, smiling. She is undisturbed by her imperfection. Then I was back inside and Charles asks why I am in the building and I realize I don't have the keys anymore, that I'd turned them in, and a woman was just leaving my office and before the door shut, I slipped inside to get the piece of paper and left it on Doreen's desk and woke wondering what I've left undone.
Stretching in my sheets and wondering what day is this? Is it a work day? Where am I to be? The muddled mind of a few extra days off trying to organize my orbit. Slowly realizing, I belonged no where. No one anywhere was waiting for me; waiting for me to show up, to call, to clean up, to even get up. This was the start of my day; a dream of a place I don't belong and will not return and a dream of Sara to a time that she cannot return. The steps we take, tapping along the walk, not even aware of the door slowly closing behind us.
At the end of my day, I was driving home with Sally and as I passed the intersection at Cape St. Clair, a small car merged behind mine, turned into my neighborhood, turned down my street, all the way down, allowing me the space to pull up a bit and then back into my parking space. Dylan, smiling his same smile that to me is just as the smile he has had since a toddler, generous and genuine. He'd been driving to his father's house but at the intersection, he saw a red Prius and realized it was me and followed me home. Dylan has a new guitar, a Les Paul Gibson, beautiful and suited so well to him. He followed me and showed it to me and said he'd spent two hours playing it and it was so beautiful that he thought he might cry. That is who he is now; a musician. My son is a musician who has played long enough and has had music throughout his life, such that he'd spend all his savings so he might make a beautiful sound. He will never be without music, without his fingers plumbing notes out of the dark. Sara will never be without her friends, even the ones who are gone like Beth.
There are moments in our lives that are informing our future from which we are blinded in our blurry life. And in the background, maybe in our peripheral vision and just at the zenith of our hearing, the door softly clicks, closed.
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