What Was the Last Dream That You Remember? (#27): Questions for Children & Adults Alike Series

A friend shared an article from the Huffington Post entitled “50 Eye-Opening Questions to Ask Your Grandchildren.” In reading the piece, I realized it could serve as inspiration for this childless 30-year-old. It would be a good exercise for me… for all of us. So here’s to a new series of questions. I’m going to pick my favorites and share over the coming months. May you also be inspired to reflect deeply on your own answers. 

Question: What was the last dream that you remember?

Two nights ago, I dreamt about a place I briefly lived that forever has a hold on my heart. In the dream, I was walking up the main street toward a house that became my home but in the dream the street dragged on forever. It wasn’t the sidewalk path I remembered. It was a seemingly endless crawl up what looked and felt like the shoulder of a highway. 

I should be there by now, I kept thinking in my dream as I felt my legs growing heavy and my stamina running low. I should be there by now. 

I wanted to go to all the places I loved. I wanted to visit the bookstore and run on the trail that hugs the water. I wanted to sit in the grass at the park with a notebook. And instead, I found myself grasping up the hill on a path that—had this been a topographically accurate dream—would have been flat. 

When I finally jolted out of it, I found myself sitting with an ache. I missed it. I missed that place a lot and I felt it in my bones. I missed how I moved through my days and I missed the people I spent those days with. I missed the air.

I remember being deliriously happy there. Life as it should be lived. That’s how it felt. 

And then I left. And years later I had a dream that settled in my stomach for a day or so. And what does this mean?

I think it means I was lucky to love a thing this much.

Dreaming about this town doesn’t make me sad. It doesn’t fill me with regret. It makes me feel love. How unbelievably lucky I have been to scatter my heart around the world. How lucky have I been to fall so fully for my temporary adopted homes. How lucky I am to have something to miss. 

How truly, genuinely lucky I am to have memories to dream.