Woke up startled

I woke up startled from my afternoon nap today. I hate to wake up from a nap when twilight has succumbed to darkness. It's disorienting. I hate it so much that even when darkness is hours and hours away I wake up every ten to fifteen minutes to check. Or maybe that's the crazy Dutch guilt in not taking the opportunity to scrub the bathroom floor and instead sleeping? So while I love naps, generally they aren't worth the effort. Today I decided to take one anyway.

I dreamed that my grandma had called. I was amazed to hear her wonderful voice (she never calls - of the depression age where writing is more economical) and just then the phone dialed a family I knew from college. Just as I connected spiritual or emotionally, the phone dialed again. On and on and on and on the same pattern of disorientation, connection, and then another connection. Until there was this concert of voices on a single conference call. All of them talking over one another (I don't think they realized the others were on the line). They were not pulling or guilting or doing anything other than being who they were. There was no manipulation or coercion it was a huge sampling of the important relationships of my life occupying the same segment of time. Some seemed to have concerns they wanted to tell me. Others were as shocked to be on the line with me as I was. It was reach-out-america gone wild.

As I was processing all of this the cell phone rang in my dream again (after my grandma's voice, it had done all the calling) and as the phone moved from my ear to hand, the alarm buzzed, I stirred, and it was past twilight on a Sunday evening. Today. Do you ever have a moment after a dream, when you recognize there was substantive profundity, but just aren't sure what to do with it? That's where I've been since.

I think this dream was a gift. There seems to be so much that is unresolved in my life. Really, that is how life works. If it resolved, this would be one of the biggest curses I could imagine. We live as if there are at least a few more days ahead, we develop routines, some even cultivate deep lives in God and with others. Part of the psychology is "a little more time." From desire unfulfilled to have having three grandparents still alive in my 30's, but living 3,000 miles away, there is much unresolved in my life. A niece and nephew far away, and sisters and parents at a distance. When no one is around on a Sunday afternoon my thoughts don't center on career path, car, or vacation, thankfully they are person-oriented. Mostly it's calls I know I should make, elements of gratitude I should take, people I should touch. Instead of a mental experience of possibilities, trajectories, and dots that never connect. For some reason I think the dots should connect and I tend to hold life hostage until I can find a way to make it happen. Some times it is quite a tenacious stance (affording me moments of thought and contemplation that are so precious) and many times it's cowardice (just pick up the phone). If I just connected a dot here or there without the ultimate figured out, I would probably have a pretty amazing life...