09/09/1999

Dream: I’m Going To Have Kittens!

-no, really! I’m pregnant with kittens
-I wonder how this pregnancy came about, but everyone else acts like it’s perfectly natural
-my stomach is not very big, which leads me to believe that I’m not far along in my pregnancy
-I didn’t have contractions or anything, but my water broke and I figured, “Well, I guess I’m going to have them now!”
-I don’t remember giving birth, but I end up at grandma’s house and there are a lot of people there, even my grandparents who died years ago
-I have a litter of 5 or 6 kittens, all of them orange and brown
-I wonder how I’ll feed them. I’m terribly afraid of nursing because they’ll bite me and they have sharp little teeth
-I ask grandma what I should do, and she says I should definitely nurse them
-I look at all my kittens asleep in a cardboard box and one of them yawns and stretches out
-I’m still scared they’ll bite me

Today I met a woman who lives down the street. She was a delightful older person, the widow of a retired firefighter. When I approached her house on my way to school, she stood waiting outside. She approached me and introduced herself, saying that last year, after her husband passed away, she’d spent most days sitting in a chair, simply staring out the front window.

Every day, at 7:40, she’d watched me walk by. It became part of her morning routine. She would get up each weekday morning, make herself a cup of tea, sit in her chair, and wait for me to walk by. She didn’t realize quite how much she counted on me until the summer came and I wasn’t walking by her house anymore, at least not on a regular basis. She said she missed me. Without even knowing me, she missed me. And she came out today to let me know.

At first, it seemed strange to think that someone I don’t even know was watching me every day, relying on my walk toward the bus stop to start her day. Weird. Very weird.

But there is a lesson in all experiences, and perhaps the lesson in today’s is that our actions have much wider impact than we can ever know.

Giselle