Wind-Blown Dreams

(No pictures today--I'll do that tomorrow. With any luck, all the trick-or-treaters won't be blown away in the wind or dissolved in rain, and I can add a few of them in with the book party album.)

After our wonderful book party yesterday in Northport, I was more than ready for sleep, but during the night the wind beat against the old farmhouse, and, snug under the covers, hearing it, I shivered mentally. For some reason (the wind?) I waked early, too, thinking I saw morning light on the other side of the curtains. By the time I realized it was reflected light from another room my mind was in daytime mode and took time to relax again into sleep.

Then came the dream: We were leaving the grocery store in Cedar (except that both the town and the store looked very different in my dream from the reality I know), and I’d forgotten something and had to go back in. This time I somehow found my way to the back portion of the store, the original building, rickety wood with a hard, bare dirt floor and antique farm implements hanging from rusty hooks. When the new store had been build onto the front, new living quarters had been constructed between the old and new store areas. Well, somehow the beef I’d gotten a group together to buy on shares, meat we’d all planned to package together when a neighbor did the butchering (those bits are from real life: we do have such a consortium formed) had already been packaged and was ready to be picked up, but I had nothing to put it in and would have to come back with a friend and several big tubs. Several other brief conversations interrupted this central one. I had also ordered (this is complete dream fantasy!) some fresh meat scraps for my dog, Sarah, but those weren’t ready. Then an old woman from the store family offered me a package of something that looked like jerky, saying it was a present, something special that was hard to find any more. Maybe she had made it herself. It was lighter in color and felt moister in the package than store jerky. There was someone else who introduced herself as a new neighbor. David was waiting out in the car, but I was meeting all kinds of wonderful people, all so friendly and eager to talk, that it was hard to leave. –And just as it was hard to leave the store in my dream, it is difficult now to reconstruct the wonder of the place, with all the fascinating detail present in the dream.

When dim, weak morning light really did appear in the window and I got up to take Sarah outdoors for her first sortie of the day, I found that the relentless wind had done just what I’d been hoping a big wind would do: the carpet of leaves covering the grass had been blown away! This is one thing, at least, that is made easier by living in the country. If the wind blows hard enough, no leaf-raking is necessary.