Dreams

I dream about writing. Not nighttime dreams, those are filled with anxiety dreams about losing one of my children at the pool or forgetting their homework folders. More accurately, I daydream about writing, being a bona fide writer, one who can count it a job, a hard agonizing job, where I “sit down at the typewriter and open a vein,” like Red Smith said.

I started thinking about this tonight when my order from Old Navy arrived in the mail. I discovered the glory of Old Navy and online shopping when my oldest child went to a public kindergarten with the khaki shorts and polo uniform. I had a 5, 3, and 1 year old at the time, so there was no time to shop. I began finding clothes for myself there too, and tonight I tried on a top I had ordered that I could only justify keeping in my daydream of dressing for a meeting at my publishing house or on a book tour or to a Parnassus book discussion of my latest hit.

Alas, it didn’t fit with my carpooling lifestyle, so I marked it to return for something more realistic, less dreamy. I do that with my writing. Because it doesn’t pay bills, writing time is returned for laundry and field trips and people, beautiful people, because there are no deadlines to meet. It’s just a dream.

But here’s the thing, much about my life is dreamy. I have three fabulous children, an incredible husband, an unbelievable community, time—between grocery store and Target runs and laundry loads and baseball games and ballet—to write, even just for me.

There is beauty in yoga pants and the occasional dress for helping out at the elementary school. I have a brood I cart to little league games and Cub Scout meetings and Muppets movies and loads of laundry to prove it. This is full, I know. This is dreamy.

But it’s fun to dream of the greener grass of accessorizing for photo shoots and of a finished, printed product to hold in my hand. Yet maybe I have that, four people I have and hold daily.

I sit at the edge of a chasm, it’s deep. And the far-off shore reeks of success and money and fame that feel like selfish endeavors, silly dreams. Even here, at that edge, I can hear behind me the siren’s call of my land of laundry and dishes and loving. I stay. And I want to relish and feed on what I have today.

Maybe tomorrow I can dream and smell more. Maybe my big writing idea will hit me in the carpool line or at the grocery store. Maybe it just did. May I have eyes to see beauty unnamed and unwritten before me now.

Do you dream?

I'd love to hear what you dream about.

You can put your response in the comment box below.