Notes from a dreamer’s past

As a child, I’d sit on the kitchen counter, my bare heels tapping the tops of the cabinet doors below, and watch my mother unload groceries from stiff paper bags. Like a magician conjuring red scarves from ordinary suit sleeves and rabbits from tall hats, she’d reach into the depths of those brown bags and pulled forth boxes of Cap’n Crunch, frozen French bread pizzas, and packages of bologna bearing the red and yellow Oscar Mayer label. All were delicacies for my 1960s suburban palate, but it always seemed there might be something more inside those bags; something that might change more than just the contents of my lunchbox, that is.

It was the same feeling I’d get when I’d step out onto the brick stoop, and reach into the metal mailbox affixed to the side of the house.  Perhaps inside one of those envelopes would be a message from the world beyond the hedge that defined our corner lot. And maybe the words on that page would spell adventure or good fortune.

Before I was tall enough to reach the teller’s window at the bank or had a single item to list on a job application or resume, at age 8 or 9 or 10 years old, I already scanned the classifieds in the back of the newspaper. I had an itching sense that among the columns of notices from people looking for lost cats, or selling trucks or offering Employment Opportunities, there might be one that was meant for me, and that would bring some great reward—something far greater even than the ones offered for locating a lost pet.

Around that same time, I began my lifelong ritual of reading Dear Ann Landers, whose column was my peephole into other people’s living rooms where ungrateful husbands and seething wives did daily battle. It was distressing to discover that most adults regretted having children, and nearly all seemed to be unhappy. But it was reassuring to read those sorry tales over the shoulder of someone whose job it was to dispense magic words to make things better.

A common thread of restlessness and yearning weaves these disparate quirks together. Maybe my nagging hunger for authenticity and a better way was just a common condition of a suburban childhood. Or maybe these were early signs that I was on a search for a glint of hope or promise from the bigger world.  And I watched for its entry at the portals available to me: Grocery bags ferried home in the back of my mother’s Buick and deposited onto the Formica kitchen counter; the flap of the mailbox where a man in a blue uniform dropped messages from afar; or the newsprint oracle of classifieds and advice columns.

All of which might explain my early fascination with dreams, too. Before I could drive a car or possess a library card in my own name, let alone read most of the books shelved there, dreams welcomed me into a mysterious land beyond the sidewalks and streets of childhood.

I remember sitting at the edge of my bed before tucking in each night to say my prayers, then closing my eyes so I could peer through the thick curtain of the starless heavens—and into something altogether different.

© Copyright 2020 Tzivia Gover www.annecampbelldesign.com/thirdhousemoon