Day 4 - Sleep

December 13, 2014

(This is part of a 365 project during my 70th year. Each day I will find a gift the day brings, write about it and illustrate it.)

A dream last night left me physically and emotionally exhausted. According to the National Sleep Foundation, dreams help alleviate depression and clarify perspective. This could be so because I dream a lot, depression is rare and I’ve never seen a therapist.

In my recent nocturnal adventure, I had ridden my old Honda Hawk motorcycle to a Unitarian Church. Although the minister, Fred Muir, was in the dream, it wasn’t his Unitarian Universalist Church of Annapolis. The setting was daytime in a small town with the church on a hill. I held some papers while searching for a missing paper in this very old house-like church that made no sense in its layout. I had to go through one bedroom after another, some doors blocked by refrigerators, trying to find an office but, instead, found an elderly couple living in the house, the man obviously near the end of his days.

Eventually I found the paper I was looking for but could not locate my motorcycle for the trip home. It was not parked on the church lot. I walked up and down the hill to town several times but with no luck. Then I ran into Fred back in the couple’s living quarters and he offered to help me. Trying to go to the rear lot, we discovered a parallel hallway where we could avoid the inner maze.

Once outside, Fred showed me another spot at the top of the town. The sun was setting and I wished I had my camera with me because my mind was going click, click, click. One particular image remains…on the left, the low sun and sparkling highlights on a large body of water; on the right, three silhouetted figures walking away from us on shimmering sand. They appeared to be a woman and man holding a baby. The silhouette gradually disappeared in the distance.

After that, I found my motorcycle downhill by the town, put all my papers into a long oval box that I secured to the back of my bike and started back home.

Upon awakening this morning, my annoyed feelings changed to an epiphanous blending of connections, loss and friends. Standing in my robe, I opened an envelope on the table from the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.  A donation from Fred and Karen Muir had been made in my recently departed father’s name.

Today’s very early morning gift—a dream.

>DAY 5 Keep Going