Dreams. What are they? According to my Webster’s New World Dictionary, they are “A sequence of sensations, images, thoughts, etc. passing through a sleeping person’s mind.”
I am a person who has dreams almost every night. It seems that every morning, as soon as I wake up, I am thinking through the dream I just had. And it seems to happen every day. Not just once in a while, but every day. But often, by the time I am having breakfast, I have forgotten what the dream was about.
When I first wake up, I have always told myself that there is no way I will forget that crazy dream, but in a matter of minutes later, it may be gone. I can’t remember anything about it, just that I had an interesting dream that I thought I could remember.
Today was different. I remember a lot of what I had just dreamt. I dreamed that I had lost my red purse. (I don’t have a red purse.) Anyway, I had a dream about losing my red purse and where all I had gone looking for it.
The place that remained in my brain was that I went to the old clerk of courts office in the old courthouse to find it. But when I walked in the door of the clerk’s office, it had been changed into a big, beautiful living room. That was the end of it.
Where did that come from? When I did work in the old courthouse, I went up to that office several times to see the clerk, who at that time, was my very good friend, Ruth Scott.
Many dreams have been about not being able to find my way home after I had been somewhere. A vivid memory of another dream is when I was on Ohio Wesleyan University campus and met my mother walking toward me. That was great because now I could go home with her. It looked to me like she was coming from University Hall all by herself. She said she was going to “sit in on a class.” Wow, that was odd! By the time I dreamt it, she had died years before.
Another dream that I haven’t ever forgotten has to do with the births of our two daughters. When I gave birth to our first daughter, it was a long, long labor. Then near the birth of our second daughter, I kept dreaming that she was already born. For many times straight, I would wake up in the a.m. and think she had already been born.
Finally, when the day did come, it was a very short painless delivery. All good!
The worst dream that has never left me was years and years ago. I dreamt that my younger sister, Ann Lee, had died in my bedroom closet. And I found her there. I never told her I had such a bad dream about her. She passed just a year ago this past Aug. 4, and a lot of us still miss her greatly.
I was not surprised when I had dreams about any of my problems at work. I can imagine that happens to a lot of people.
As I look back over memories of past dreams, it seems that the main subject has been that I can’t get home from wherever I have been, and that I have lost a lot of things that were important to me.
I would like to close with one more dream, but right now I can’t remember any more of them. Sorry!
Kay E. Conklin is a retired Delaware County recorder who served four terms. She graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University with a degree in sociology and anthropology.
