Far away is only far away if you don't go there. . . .

I am finally feeling uprooted. All week my dreams have been about packing up houses in time for moving trucks to arrive, taking long rides on buses which were headed for airports. My children were always with me, and they were usually more on task than I was. I was always caught up doing something else and then feeling unready when the time for the truck to arrive or the bus to leave came.

I am surprised to be dreaming these things now, now that the move is "over", but I guess it's not over after all. I am still coming to terms with what we have done and where we are and what it's all about.

I have always been a dreamer. It's probably the only thing I have in common with John Lennon. I used to love waking up in the morning to my own stories, so real they sometimes seemed more like memories - I still do. I have always felt sorry for people who claim they never dream (though experts say we all do); I have always dreamed vividly and frequently, sometimes several times a night so it feels like I have been asleep for days when the clock tells me I woke up just an hour ago from a different dream.

Sometimes I try to go back to sleep to reenter the dream if it was a particularly wondrous one, if it gave me a feeling I did not want to lose in the light of day, but that seldom works. Even if sleep comes, the dream I am seeking is usually gone.

I have finally gotten over the habit of repeating my dreams to other people (usually the first person I see when I wake), since I know how completely bored I am by other people's dreams,
but I always want to hang onto them, knowing how quickly they will fade if I do not reinforce them in my memory by repeating them over and over. Even when I do, I find that most times the details are gone within minutes;later in the day I may not even remember the subject matter, but only retain the strange feeling the dream gave me.

For a while when I was in graduate school I kept a dream journal by my bedside where I recorded things immediately when I woke up. Later the stories surprised even me: I no longer remembered the things I had done and seen in my dreams, but there they were on the page, recorded in blue or black ink in my own hand.

When I reread the accounts, the details then seemed oddly important - the things I would forget even if I remembered the main story of the dream. One week, for example, my two brothers were in every dream I had; they were usually on the sidelines, maybe just walking through a scene, but they were always there. What did that mean? I never figured it out, but I feel sure it meant something.

So I am not sure what my dreams of moving, packing, trucks, buses, airplanes and children mean, but I suspect they have something to do with the fact that deep inside I realize I am not at home, I am still in motion. I don't know if Malaysia will ever feel like home, but then I don't know if New Hampshire will feel like home after our sojourn here. Someone has said that, "travelling in the company of those we love is home in motion," and I agree. I may never feel settled in a particular place again, but that's not all bad, as Mr. Baggins discovered.