Ghosts in Grey

I woke from a hard dream this morning.

Colin and I were driving on a snowy road, a mountain face along one side, a river rushing along on the other. I must have been half-asleep, dreaming, because even as I dreamed, I could feel him curled against my back. In the dream, the sky was bright blue with just one or two puffy clouds.

I looked out the window from the back seat to a high cliff on the other side of the river.
I could hear children’s voices pealing out in play from the clifftop, but I could not see them. A pink and white-striped beach ball suddenly appeared off the cliff top and fell slowly — more like a balloon than a ball. A little girl’s voice raised in protest, but I still could not see the children.

As I watched the ball, I felt the car fishtail underneath me. I turned my head forward, catching sight of the sunshine on the water in the river, the snow on the road as I did. Colin was in the front seat, but not driving. The inside of the car was not usual: it was just an open space and he was facing me… something like the space of a backseat of a limousine, fitted into a 1970 Chevy Chevelle.

“Colin!” I said urgently, locking my eyes on his and pointing out the side window in the direction the car was moving. The car’s backend slid away from the mountain’s face and onto the slope toward the river. Colin turned to look out. I felt the back of the car, so close behind me, strike the water with a thudding splash.

The alarm clicked on. I woke up.

I lay there, listening to a song I recognized, half-remembered. It crawled up inside of me while the remnant of the dream hung on.

Shadows and shape mixed together at dawn
But by time you catch them simplicity’s gone
And so we sort through the pieces
My friends and I
Searching through the darkness to find
The breaks in the sky.

And the reason that she loved him
Was the reason I loved him too
And he never wondered what was right or wrong
He just knew – he just knew.

The BBC2 announcer reminded me, after it was over, of David Crosby and Phil Collins’ odd duet, “Hero.”

I had been dreaming, half-awake all morning, since 5:35 when I got up to go the the bathroom. I dreamt about Ford Kistler and Brian Wilson, aka B-Love, hiking to a rundown old house in the desert. B-Love wore cool sunglasses and smiled and smiled, the way I always remember him.

I dreamt I was floating inches above the floor of the smallest bedroom of the house I grew up in, 2328 Adams Street, Davenport, Iowa. The room was still painted Inca Gold, the color my brother John, chose. And because I could still feel Colin against me, asleep, I was carrying him on my back as I floated above the dirty carpet, face down.

I dreamt I was at a reception in a large hall, having dinner with some important business contacts, when suddenly I realized my high school biology teacher, Sr. Donna Donovan, was at the next table with my mom. I climbed over the table to hug Sr. Donna, and found all my former nun teachers there too: Sr. Stasia from fifth grade, Sr. Genevieve the music teacher, Sr. Joan from first grade, Sr. Carmel, who gave me my first detenion, and others, whose faces I can see, but names I can’t remember. I hugged them all.

A few days ago, I caught sight of my reflection in the window of the Bakerloo Line train. It was Friday. I was coming home from The Passage, the soup kitchen where I volunteer twice a week. I felt happy but very tired, as I always do when I leave the Passage. The work is hard, but joyful. I am more content there than any place.

I was moving my eyes over the other passengers, as I am wont to do, when I caught a glimpse of my own face in the window. I shook for a minute, staring back at the grey ghost as she fixed her eyes on me. Wild hair poking out from under a stocking cap, freckles she always forgets she has. Another dream …

London in winter is a town of ghosts. The fog is not a soft mantle, but a million-billion particles of broken memory, lost dreams, and yearnings. London mourns its losses deeply, its plagues and fires and violent deaths, in winter, where, grey — like dreams — hangs like a pallor in the morning.