THE SUNLIT DREAM AND THE MORRIS MINOR

I woke up feeling dazed and confused today. I just couldn’t understand where I was. A few moments before, I’d been driving a morris minor down a sunlit road. 

It must have been a spring day because the sky was that bright, fresh blue you only really get on spring mornings, and the grass and trees looked young and green.

I was wearing a hat. And what felt like an old, starchy shirt and tie. The sleeves were rolled up to the elbows. Sunlight angled in and lit the wooden dash, then fell in interrupted stripes across my trousers. I was happy. The road was ahead, and the engine ticked as the hopeful young world sped by.

And then, without warning, as if something hot and terrible had happened, that spring sky suddenly turned jet black, the stuffy air rushed in through my nostrils and I was conscious of the sound of rain, pounding on glass, hammering the window, a thousand tiny fists desperate to burst in, to flood the car, and pull me under. The blackness swirled, slowly spinning and resolving into squares, perhaps a door, perhaps a towel, perhaps a coat, perhaps the early morning light of a November day, stumbling in through the windows of my father-in-law’s house. I was awake. It was autumn after all.

It took me quite a long time to properly get going today. Somehow dreams have a habit of pulling everything except your heart back into reality. My brain was limping into the morning, but my heart was somehow still in the dream.

Sammy made me porridge and a cup of tea. I’m very thankful for her; these are kind things to do for someone who can barely talk. All I had were half sentences and a few noises, all of which were in danger of sounding terribly rude. It’s one of the things I resolved to do when I stopped being a teenager - remember that sometimes the words are fully coherent and beautiful inside the head, but that they have a hard time finding their way out through the tongue. I knew I needed to remember that when I was grown up. This morning, I tried hard not to grunt.

What do you suppose that dream was about? A sort of longing for the past? A nostalgic feeling that I missed out on something? Or that I was once on a journey that was happy and hopeful, and I’m no longer on that road? Or just an odd night-time dream that’s not really supposed to mean anything?

Sammy went to work. I sat at the kitchen table, scrolling mindlessly through instagram, dangling a spoon over a bowl. The bright halogen light clashed with the angry-looking sky above the trees and houses. Pretty soon I’d need to head out there, get to our house for the day, and work. It all seems a thousand miles and a hundred years away from the sunlit dream and the morris minor.

I’m probably just exhausted to be honest. Hopefully, we’ll get to go home soon.