DREAMS AND FRIENDS

Lately I’ve just had anxiety-fueled nightmares. I’ll either remember no dreams or wake up in a fit of panic. The last one I had went like this:

I’m invited to watch a regatta (boat race) of 8-person crew boats. (Something I did for 6 years). And though I thought we’d be watching from the lakeside, we’re in a crowded hall at the top of a tall building. The whole thing is like a spectator sky box, glassed in with no windows that open. Getting near the glass gives me vertigo, but I look anyway - and way down below, in wild ocean waves, are the tiny boats racing, the rowers so tiny, like ants swinging toothpicks.

And to the right of the race is a narrow rickety pier on wooden stilts, where more spectators are walking and bicycling by. I see my 12 yo son biking on the pier, my 8 yo son in the back, in some kind of bucket. I’m immediately alarmed.

I’m yelling: What is my kid doing biking on the pier?? He sucks at biking - and S. can’t swim!

They’ve only just pulled into view and already, he’s weaving and faltering and getting dangerously close to the edge. I’m screaming and no one in the crowd is paying attention. I watch an adult whiz by my kids on a bike, throwing my kid off track and as he dodges out of their way, I see him lose balance and start to roll towards the edge. He’s tipping over and putting his foot down, and now the tri-wheel wagon bike he’s on is rolling backwards, slowly, off the edge of the pier. It’s about a 200 ft drop to the ocean surface below. And I watch them plummeting silently, in slow motion.

Gauging the distance from the pier to the water’s surface, I think it’s far enough that the impact alone could kill or maim them both, and they’re in this heavy metal bike which could land on top of them or pull them under. But my main worry is that T is not a strong swimmer and S can’t swim at all. So I think, they might die on impact, and I’m another 100 feet above the pier, and I likely won’t get there in time to spot them at the surface or save them both. But I can’t watch them drown and do nothing - so I break the window and jump., thinking I might be jumping to my own death on top of them. But it’s all I can do so I do it.

And then I wake up in a sweat.

Now this is how all of my dreams have gone lately. Awful scenarios. Stress and death.

The next day, my friend texts me that she’s had the most MAGICAL dream. She said it was one of the best dreams of her life. It was so vivid and real and wonderful, that she lay in bed an extra hour just relishing it, integrating it into her mind so she wouldn’t lose a detail. Then she sprang from bed and wrote it all down. In order to protect her dream, her husband went to drop their son at school instead of her doing it - so she could capture it.

A day later, we’re in the car together and she recounts the dream.

It was soooooo good, and you were in it! She says.

I was?! I’m so excited to be starring in magical dreams outside of my own head.

She says we were in Manhattan, and it was night. I had great plans for us - people to meet, places to go. Like a child, she snuck out of the house to meet me. She was reveling the freedom of no one knowing where she was or what she was up to. And the two of us went on an all-night adventure.

You’ve got to meet my friends, I’d said! And we’d hopped from one magical location to the next meeting fabulous creative badasses. One of ‘my friends’ was making garlands from succulents and put one on each of us. We visited rooftop terraces, cozy underground bookstores, fireplace lounges, underground speakeasy-type parties. I was her wing-woman and we were unstoppable.

She said I spent the whole night introducing her to the coolest women she’d ever met. And that every pitstop was more wonderful than the next. We were wild, free, young, ecstatic, and alive. We were carefree and rid of all anxiety. There was no pandemic.

Her story and joyful telling of it brought me vicarious thrills. It felt real. I could see it, taste it, hear it, just as if it’d happened. We got around in a self-driving Uber that let us just input any destination we wanted into a touchscreen on the dash. She said we watched the sun come up and laughed and hugged each other goodbye. She wasn’t sure how to get home but I told her to just jump on an electric bike with a basket that was parked nearby. When she sat on the seat, a guy appeared and was like, excuse me? That’s my bike. But instead of being angry, this super attractive guy let her sit on the back, arms around him, as he biked her home. I stood on the Manhattan sidewalk at sunrise, beaming and waving at her from behind.

And I realized that sometimes, when all we have are nightmares, we need our friends to dream our dreams for us.