Psssst! The dog in my dream whispered to me from under the bed. I was mopping up a spreading patch of water on the hardwood floor between the twin beds and rearranging the snapshots on the mantel. John Davidson, looking as he had some fifty years ago was on the television on the stand in the corner, confessing to serial murder and negotiating his surrender to a plain clothes detective who spoke in Sean Connery's voice. Pssst! The dog, my first Schipperke, I realized, whispered again, his muzzle peeking out from the bottom edge of the comforter. Have you a thimble? he asked and stretched out a paw. I could hear the sounds of housecleaning from the downstairs, my second husband's idle whistling, and the playful noise of two kittens climbing the lace curtains on the windows. Water was running in the distance and a player piano in the hall was steadily churning out a bluesy rendition of "The Maple Leaf Rag." I was always partial to Scott Joplin, the Schipperke said with a grin and melted away like the cheshire cat in the looking glass world. It was about that time, just as I was discovering I had an apron pocket full of thimbles, that a small claw from the real world snagged my wrist and I began to wake up. One of the kittens hanging from the curtains meowed clearly to me, I understood it to say Those are all used to be thimbles, a dog in the real world then barked and I was awake.
Everything can be explained, I thought to myself - dreams are snatches of everyday life and memories, images and
overheard conversations, fragments of whatever happens to catch on the edges of consciousness, all tumbled together in no particular order. I had recently seen that John Davidson - now 70 and silver haired but still as fine a looking man as ever he was - was appearing in a nearby Texas town. I remembered seeing his picture in the ad and being surprised that he was still around. I had fallen asleep and neglected to turn off the latest "Law and Order" marathon, the night before on the drive home I had heard a story about a jazz musician, a piano player who had begun improvising on Joplin's rags. I had slept surrounded by a veritable covey of cats and the last screensaver image I remembered was Joshua, my first Schipperke. Only the thimbles remained unaccounted for and then I placed them - I had been looking for a needle and thread just a few days before and had thought to myself if only I had Nana's mending basket, so precisely organized and so neatly kept.
Nonsense or chaotic, vivid or nightmarish, sometimes I'd rather stay in the dream than return to the waking world.
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