Dreamscapes

I host Open Mic Night at The Onyx Grounds in Sierra Vista, Arizona, the second Thursday of each month (Come join us!) February’s theme was: DREAMS. It got me thinking about an old friend. What follows is what I shared at open mic.

You were the first kid who waved at me when I whizzed by on my bike. It was sticky hot, and your house was across the street from the park where a small pond transformed into an ice-skating rink every winter after the holidays. I didn’t know about the rink that day, the day you waved. My parents and I, along with my two sisters and our dog Buttons, just moved from the city to a three-bedroom brick ranch a few blocks from your house.

I was seven years old, and so were you. It’s funny how kids that age can recognize a peer with razor accuracy, even when racing by on a bicycle. I was missing my city friends, so after exploring the park, I hoped you were still playing out in the garage. And you were. I didn’t care at that age that you were a boy. That nervousness and insecurity would come later. On that day, we stood out in your driveway looking at the pond. I said you were lucky to live by a park. You said that you had a bike, too.

We started second grade a few weeks later. I went to the Catholic school. You went to the public elementary school. I didn’t see you that year—a lifetime for a kid. I remember looking at your house from the ice rink that winter, hoping we could skate together.

The priest at the Catholic school was an asshole, or so my mom said. I switched to the public school and was thrilled to see you on the bus on the first day of third grade. Your bus stop was after mine, and sometimes we sat together. You were tall like me. I liked that about you.

I traveled with a pack of local girls in the summer. We rode our bikes or sometimes walked down to the park. Your neighbor lived in that big house on the corner with the white fence and a huge lilac bush out front. My girlfriends and I sucked nectar from the tiny purple flowers. This was years before we stole cigarettes from our parents and smoked them in the woods behind the tennis courts.

You and I grew up together, if not with the same friends or interests. Still, I liked seeing you, knowing you were there. Always my first friend in a new place because of that day in your driveway.

Years would pass, and when classmates noticed each other in that way, I set my sights on boys who were trouble. You were always kind.

Painting by Bill Owen

Years would pass again, fourteen to be exact, and there you were in a dream, wearing a black cowboy hat, soothing my anxiety during a tough divorce. You made me feel safe. I loved you for that. I still do.

Some thirty years have passed, and still you appear in my dreams, always wearing a black cowboy hat and always watching over me in hard times. A friend, a guide, a wise man. And I am grateful.

You visited recently while I slept, but this time was different—no cowboy hat. Your head was down, and your shoulders drooped as I walked behind you down the hall of the house you grew up in, toward the bedrooms, where I noticed the family photos were missing from the walls. You were inconsolable because your mother had just passed. And to be fair, I knew this. I have known for a long time that she is gone. We went to the kitchen. The house was so 70s, including a brown stove and a matching refrigerator. We sat at the table. “Tell me how I can help,” I said.

“You’re here. It’s enough,” you said.

And I thought, you always know what to say.