A Bloggy Dream

Last night I dreamed that I was at my parents’ cottage in the height of summer, and I was blogging. I blogged at night when the light in the cottage glowed yellow on the small lake, and during the day when the sun glinted off the water’s ripples in a way that made me keep looking away, retinas burning.

Someone on the lake was reading my blog, and managed to track me down based on watching lights in cottages at night and matching them to the time I posted my thoughts. She was a midwife or a doula or something, intent on helping people, and kind. Her daughter, who was almost grown up, was sick, not sick with a cold but with something if not life threatening than significantly life changing. I think it was life threatening though, and her name was Hope. I don’t remember the name of the mother, the woman reading my blog, but she was strong too, and swam across the lake to me one afternoon. I stood high up in the sun, looking down at her as she swam.

I was a bit taken aback at how interested she was in me when she reached my side. She asked me lots of questions, and invited me to a belly dance show she had tickets for.

When we met at the show entrance, she asked me how my day/weekend/whatever had been. She asked me how I was feeling and about my more recent posts. I talked and talked in response.

Then she mentioned her daughter, Hope, and I felt bad that I hadn’t thought to ask her and said so. She said she’d noticed or something like that. I tried to make a joke about how self-absorbed and self-centred I was but she didn’t laugh. She just said, “I KNOW!”

Then she walked out, angry, too angry to spend another instant in my presence. And I found myself without a ticket, without a valid reason for being where I was, and alone in a crowd, more self-absorbed than ever.