I Had A Dream

—a dream whose content I remembered upon waking, and this doesn’t always happen. Plus I woke with an awareness that I was smiling (I’m serious), and that is something I can’t recall ever happening when waking from a dream.

Alright, alright, I’ll tell you. But let the record reflect that this was a dream, and dreams are, well, dreams. Oh, it’s good for you to know that in the non-dream world my daughter Sarah and her fiance Griffin are to be married next summer. Got it? Good. Here we go. And yes, I know, dream analysts will have a freakin’ field day with this.

[DREAM SEQUENCE BEGINS]

I’m walking down a shadowy church hallway with my wedding suit and shoes in hand (it’s obviously time for me to change), and I see a door cracked slightly open. I knock and a voice says, “C’mon.” I step inside to see a young woman I clearly know who clearly knows me. She’s changing, sitting by a window, rolling hose up her legs (ha, go for it, dream analysts).

“Sorry, I’m looking for a place to change.”

She jumps up, insists I stay, takes me by the arm and pulls me inside the room and shuts the door behind her. And then (it’s the strangest thing), she continues changing. And then (stranger still) I start to change, and I look around and the room is filled with people I clearly know and who clearly know me and they’re all changing too. All these people at various stages of dress and undress. But it’s not weird or creepy or shameful or Baptisty or anything like that. It’s beautiful—people of all shapes and sizes changing into their wedding suits or dresses or whatever, and everyone is mucho talky and loud laughing and that new Lizzo song is playing. The room is electric. An older woman (older than me) strides up, winks, spins and says, “Help me with my zipper.” And I do.

It’s then the room begins to take on this fantastical feel for all the suits and dresses or whatever are so colorful, like nothing is uniform or matchy or muted but eye-popping and amazing and varied and nobody’s worried about outshining the bride or anything fragile like that, they’re simply being their radiant selves. I’m lovin’ every minute of it. And then the church bells peal alerting us it’s almost time. I step to the center of the room and whistle loud through two fingers in the corners of my mouth (clearly a dream). Everyone pauses to listen to the father of the bride (that’s me).

Please, quickly let me say from my heart thank you. It is not a slight thing that you are here today. Far too many days ring trivial, but days like today, moments like this run deep, they matter, they’re weighty, they help us mark time and tell stories and kick at the darkness around us so deep. My hope is that some day when you’re older, older than me (I wink), that pieces of this dream might cross your waking minds, causing you to remember the brilliance of this day, the day Sarah and Griffin (I get choked up a second or two) were married. You’re all just so…so beautiful.

Now everyone’s clapping and whoopin’ and you’d think we were about to rout the fookin’ Anglish or something. But then the crowd quiets, then divides. A small girl approaches me, she’s spectacularly dressed in the most gorgeous blue dress, not navy or cornflower but that blue to break your heart—Colorado blue. I extend my hand to twirl her and while I get her started, she takes it from there, whirling from girl to grown, not some cutesy princess twirl but instead transforming to a woman spinning a universe into being, more of a “it’s bad bitch o’clock.”

I stand back, awed.

[DREAM SEQUENCE ENDS]

As I said, I woke up with the distinct awareness I was smiling. And my cheeks were wet.

Will all or any of this come true? I don’t know. It’s not my day, it’s theirs. And there’s a lot of time between now and next summer, I mean things could come off the rails, get scattered from hell to breakfast. Sarah and Griffin might say forget all this and run off to Coeur d’Alene and tie the knot in a private ceremony and inform us after the fact.

But I did have the dream. Quite a doozie, huh?