A DREAMY THANKSGIVING

Just after I got out of the grocery store, I realized I forgot something, but things were foggy and jumbled. Standing confused in the chilly fall air, it eventually hit me; I had somehow forgotten my three-wheeled walker inside the store (similar to the folding ones my mid-90s year-old parents use). I went back in to search for it, but quickly got disoriented. It was then that I noticed all the other shoppers looked vaguely like peripheral people from my past, but when I stared at anyone closely to figure out how I knew them, they just looked back with concerned expressions.  Upset, frustrated, and almost in tears, I gave up my search and quickly left the store through a strange side exit. Wandering down the unfamiliar driveway outside without my walker or groceries, I turned a corner and entered a doorway leading to a long basement hallway. Suddenly I was sitting on a single bed in a dingy tiny dark windowless room next to a thick old-fashioned turn-knob TV. I rose to my feet when I heard voices in the hallway and peaked out through a gap in the door-jamb. Thats when I realized I was alone in a locked room of a dark depressing nursing home. Then I woke up in a cold sweat with a fitful jump. 

You certainly don’t need to be a student of Freud to have a field day with that nightmare. That one was rough. It felt like my deep subconscious had been kidnapped by Timothy Leary and Hunter S Thompson, then dumped 8 hours later, to come-down alone from a bad trip, hogtied in the back seat of an abandoned Caddy convertible just outside of Pahrump.

My heart was still racing when I got out of bed. Even after washing my face with cold water, I could not shake that crappy dream from the front of my head. It kept replaying over and over in my brain like a TV stuck on TBS Christmas day. If it wasn’t going to quickly fade and disappear like the memory of most of my dreams do when I’m fully awake, then I would just have to spend some time unwrapping and analyzing.

I thought, how odd that I didn’t realize I was old with declining faculties till the very end of the dream. I guess that’s what happens in real life too. You wake up one day suddenly wondering where did it all go and how did I get to the final act of this wonderful play so quickly. I guess, for all my bravado about not caring about getting older, there must be some cluster of paranoid dream-producing cells in my hippocampus, sitting under a Salvador Dali dripping clock, counting the seconds till I take my final embarrassing belly flop off this mortal coil.

It took a couple of hours of awaken-ness to snap me out of the foggy funk spiral that crappy nightmary dream caused. I was going to tell my wife about it when I later woke her up, but I decided not to. I always feel hypocritical talking about my dreams. You see, years ago, I had a close friend that constantly felt the need to tell me every minute detail of her previous night’s dreams. On and on everyday I’d hear about her running here, hiding there, meeting so and so… It got to the point that I felt like screaming, “who cares, that didn’t really happen. Dreams are not real life.”  She was obsessed.

I was nice and never did say that… well…  I never said ‘exactly’ that. Okay, maybe I said something similar to that, but I was young and stupid.  Anyway, because of the occasional kerfuffle I made about her habitually retelling me her dreams, I now always feel funny telling people about my mine. I keep waiting for them to say “who cares, that didn’t really happen. Dreams are not real life.” 

In my friend’s case, it was not till much later that I realized she talked about her dreams so much because she was depressed and liked her subconscious world so much more than her reality. That’s not my case, I’m the opposite.  I love my real life and absolutely hate dreams. It’s not that I am a control freak, but to me dreams feel like someone else has grabbed the reins to my brain and is steering it through all sorts of undesirable unnecessary experiences. I just don’t like it!  It’s like investing every penny you own into the most amazing fantastic car ever built, and then nightly handing the keys over to a blind Tasmanian devil with a meth problem and a teenager’s irrational sense of indestructability.

For most of my life, my brain and I apparently had a gentleman’s agreement. At night it could go on whatever nutty crazy dream adventure it wanted, but when I woke up in the morning, I would very rarely remember any of it. I assume dreams creep me out, because I occasionally have nasty night terrors (a way more realistic and terrifying body flailing nightmare).  I probably had one too many of those as a little kid and my brain started just blocking my dream memories to protect me. 

But then a few years ago something changed. I did not change my sleep patterns. I don’t remember getting beaned in the noggin, or falling down a flight a stairs, or getting bitten by a radioactive spider, but suddenly I was remembering most of my dreams. Way, way too many of them. I felt like Spiderman or the Hulk, magically awakening with a new unexpected superpower, only my new ability was lame and unwanted. I don’t think a character named Dream Recaller is really needed in the Marvel Universe, then again, I did not think they needed Kingo or Hellcow.

A dime-store psychologist would assume from my dream the other night, that I have intense fears of growing older. But that really is not the case. I’m not keen about the inevitable increase of strange aches that crop up for no apparent reason or those more frequent dramatic pauses I have to make when telling a story as I fish for a forgotten word or name. But those things are more of a nuisance than a fear.

If I am being truthful, what I am scared of is being alone when I’m elderly. Not having anyone to call if I slip out of my Jetson’s flying car, or need to confirm if I am being bamboozled by a holographic scam, or assisting me to the doctor if my bionic knees break and stop making the cool chee-chee-cheee-cheeee-cheeeee sound when I run (oh the future in my head is an interesting place, see why I don’t need stinky dreams).

Prior to my creepy old alone Dan dream, I had woken up at about 3:30am. At that point I was not mad at my dream creating brain yet, it was my bladder that had drawn my ire.  I wondered if I did not soon leave my comfy bed’s perfect warm spot under the covers, if it would become a wetter, soggier, much less pleasant warm spot. Of course, once that thought crept in, I knew how the debate would end, but that never stoped the discussion.

Feeling more comfortable and emptier, I slipped back into bed and let my mind drift, as I tried to fall back asleep. Maybe that is what turned my usual snoozefest dream into a awful panicky nightmare. I started thinking about the upcoming Thanksgiving weekend. Most people associate that holiday with big family gatherings around a huge table of food. And I have certainly had my fair share of those, but I have definitely had far more non-traditional Turkey days. Thanksgiving alone is like Valentine’s Day alone, even if you made the conscious positive decision to not spend it with anyone, there are still constant reminders that put that aloneness under a microscope.  

In my last year of Junior High, when we left my four older siblings up north and just my parents and I moved to Miami, Thanksgivings shifted from massive family gatherings to either small affairs at our condo or us visiting others for the day. Later on, while all the other kids at college went home for the holiday, I either stayed in town with my girlfriend or we went to her mother’s place near the beach for a small quiet turkey dinner. The one exception was my freshman year when I spent a bizarre Thanksgiving in Memphis sharing a hotel room with my folks who didn’t like blues music, Elvis, or southern style cooking. Thursday, we had a turkey lunch at a local restaurant, then Mom and I spent the rest of the weekend trying to find touristy stuff that was not closed for the holiday.

After graduating, I got a consulting job that involved extensive traveling and extremely long stressful hours seven days a week. Those years I often looked forward to Thanksgiving Thursday as a rare day off that I did not have to deal with other people. I spent many of them contentedly alone in a hotel or corporate apartment dining on a big old pizza, before going back to the grind first thing Friday morning. On several occasions, a friend visited for the holiday or I drove a couple hours to hang with people I actually knew. But those Thanksgivings were definitely nothing like the wholesome Americana holidays portrayed in the movies and homey TV specials.

I settled down into a more traditional lifestyle after I met my wife, but we lived far away from our families. Because of my work schedule, the first few years after we married, she either went up to see her relatives in Iowa without me or her mother came down to Texas to celebrate with us. One of the few years my wife and I were just home together on Thanksgiving, we could not decide what type of turkey to make, so we made three different flavored ones successively during the day and had a mini celebration meal after each one was cooked. Then things changed again after my mother-in-law passed away. The truth is, a pandemic Thanksgiving Zoom call with family all over the country, was really the closest I’ve been to an old school, big crowd family Thanksgiving in over a decade.

Having a life of nontraditional Thanksgivings was not planned, it just kind of happened. And my wife and I seem okay with it… for now. That might change, and maybe that was the point my subconscious was making with that depressing doddering Dan dream imagery.  I don’t need a big giant crowded traditional Turkey-Day dinner right now, but I think I would find comfort if I knew the option for one would still be there in the future. If I, or we, choose to be alone or do something wacky like go to vegas, that’s one thing. Not having a choice is another.

So just to calm me down and give me something to look forward to, I’m thinking about starting to organize a massive Thanksgiving Day wingding bruhaha for all my family and friends for Thursday November 26^th… 2048. No details yet. No pressure with the formal RSVPs yet. We still have a quarter of a century to go. So, maybe you all can just keep the date open or block it off on your handy dandy 2048 Calander. Hey, if my brother can plan a hiking trip up Mt. Washington for his 90th birthday (as he has been saying for decades), why can’t I plan a distant future old-school Thanksgiving shindig.  Now, since that is booked, let’s see how I sleep tonight.

Family A Very Long Time Ago… NOT ON THANKSGIVING

Family, Slightly Less Long Time Ago… NOT ON THANKSGIVING

Family More Recently… BUT STILL NOT ON THANKSGIVING