Dreams ...

I don’t sleep well, in this bed or any other for that matter, but now that I find myself far from home sleep is cruelly brief and so crowded with dreams that when I wake I am exhausted. It is that final dream of a sleepless night that stays with me into the new day, like the scent of stale smoke on my clothes after a late night in a small café.

This morning it was a dream of growing old. My son was in the dream, grown tall and rangy with a moppy head of dark blonde hair. By most measures I am old to be a new father, I knew this going in but the implications have become clearer as time moves on and I grow weaker as he grows stronger. In this morning’s dream we were together, walking and talking, and he was helping me with something, a task of some kind, the exact nature of which was lost in the fog of waking. He looked to be about twelve years old, tall for his age, but not yet a young man, still a boy. I did not see myself in this dream but I had an idea of who I was, or more precisely, what I had become and it was then that I awoke.

As the sun rises this morning, I am three thousand miles and five time zones away from my son. I am fortunate to feel these things, to dream of those I love and wish for more time together with them. Our separation clarifies what is vital in my life, but it doesn’t make it easier to do anything about it, and at this moment there is nothing I want more than to be home.