Dreams

I had a strange dream this morning. Sometimes when I am very tired, I have dreams in the early morning that so closely mimic reality that I don't know I'm asleep. I think I've woken up and yet my body is as heavy as lead and I can't move.

I had one of those dreams this morning. Except that I was in a different house, somewhere on an Army post. The air was dim, I couldn't focus my eyes very well and I couldn't move. My parents were there and I could hear them moving around.

"Jenny, Keith's coming back today," Mom said, from somewhere out of my line of vision. I looked at the shadows moving across the wall, at the huge expanse of grey bed covers. I couldn't move, I was weighted down by exhaustion.

No, no, I wanted to tell her. He wasn't coming today, it wasn't that close. There was still over a month until he came. I could hear them getting ready to leave the house. I began to wonder, could it be?

"After all, the Rotation has begun," I thought to myself in awe. In the dream, this word had huge significance. It meant hundreds and hundreds of men were ready to leave, in waves, and hundreds other to come home, a huge transference of people and emotion. This rotation was imbued with heavy, almost religious symbolism. I knew my husband was caught up in this vast mechanism.

"He is coming home today!" I suddenly exclaimed to myself, electrified. "That's why he wanted me to get the computer game today! Because he's going to surprise me by coming home. I have to get that game, I have to get ready!"

And I threw myself out of the bed and woke the hell up, all tangled in the covers and already hot. The pieces of reality slowly fell into place around me. The funny thing is, Keith had called and woken me up out of a deep sleep around six thirty and we had talked about a video game (Kill Zone 2). He had impressed upon me that I absolutely had to get that game and I had remembered the urgency in my dream.

Even though it was just a dream, I bought the game anyway.