In a dream this morning (3/17/13), we were at an airport, and Anne's and my sons Kyle and Kevin were about ages 8 and 5 (they are now 46 and 43) and the two of them were laughing and playing soccer with a white wiffle soccer ball in a crowded airport terminal.
Kevin kicked the ball to me. As it bounced off my hands, he laughed uproariously, the way he used to do when he was a little boy, for he would sometimes laugh so hard, his eyes would close for an instant, as they did during this moment in the dream.
He then chased the ball. "Be careful," I called out to Kevin (and added something to the effect of "Don't lose your ball"), as their boyish laughter and sense of fun and excitement permeated the dream and touched my heart. I was thoroughly enjoying the moment.
And then the dream ended.
It had lifted my heart and then just like that, the dream was over and I had to let it go, which left me sad. I wanted to cry out, "Don't go, stay a little longer," but they were gone.
As happened in the dream, the past (even one that had never actually taken place) arrives as such a joyous memory, but it give us no place to reside, and instead in an instant it leaves us.
Then the present greets us, which is the only place we can ever be and beckons us to live it now and make new memories, perhaps the kind that will call to us many years later in a dream.
But in this moment of awakened clarity, my heart cried out for just a few more minutes with these little boys, in a cry that can never be fulfilled.
Dick
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