I didn't think I'd be writing again here so soon, but I had a dream this morning and I'd like to get it out before I forget. It was a blend of missing my dad and Murakami and it was the most fascinating thing ever and I wanted to go back to it (an automated voice called me on the phone and ripped me out of it).
It was November 12 and I don't know the year, all I know is my dad was alive and walking and I was not young or 12 years old but myself as a I am now. We were at my grandfather's in the dark and there was so much, my Uncle in his fancy cars and some sort of nighttime picnic/family dinner/get-together and I was taking photos and video recordings because the me in the dream knew that the next day would be November 13 where he would not be lively and talking again.
But my family didn't know --and here my mind rationalized it as 1Q84. I was in a different world, one alike the one I lived in previously, but not quite the same (my mind passed over the fact that everyone was their present-day age, and not their childhood self). I remember taking a video of my father speaking --and I was reminiscing to my mother and sister, saying it's so hard to remember his voice, and since they did not know what would happen to him, I had to play it off so I could still be part of them --and I began describing his voice the same way I describe mine (which in retrospect is no way to describe my father's but dream-Liz bought it). How it's got a sort of unrememberable-childlike quality to his voice, and that's not how I'd describe it (if I could, it's been 11 years so I can barely remember what his voice sounded like, sadly enough). They believed me, I don't know what they thought about it. Nothing happened afterwards, it jumped to another scene, but I don't know if there was a sentimentality to the whole conversation.
And I remember thinking in the dream, this is my father. The real one. My siblings and mother are not the real ones. But the real ones exist, but they have each been put into their own 1Q84s, where the real Lumpy is alive and the other family members are not the real ones. And I remember grappling and accepting the fact that these were not the same siblings I had loved and grown up with in my childhood, they were different, but my father was alive, and I was okay with it, because my real siblings existed somewhere else --even if I could not see them again. They were part of a world, I just wasn't allowed to be in whatever world they were in. It was the "price" we had to pay to have a world where our father was still alive (I say price in quotes, because it seemed we did not get to choose this world or outcome, and there didn't seem to be any regrets about it, either).
It was the strangest thing. And there was a bit where Meggie and I were trying some new grey-toned-dove-grey-blue liquid lipsticks as if we were the real sisters and it was so strange. (There was also something with sharing food with a boy I didn't know --I feel like that was influenced by the party I went to this past weekend --meeting people and breaking away from the safe shell of childhood and the comfortable things I know, it was strange and the flicker of a scene took place in Chapel Hill).
But it's been such a long time since I've actively had dreams I could remember --and it's been even longer since I've seen my father in them. It was so nice to see him. He was alive and walking and laughing and running in the dark and I couldn't help but be okay with whatever strange 1Q84 of a world I had been thrust into. I woke up wanting to be back. And my dream-mind knew that this is not how the universe operates, he is gone, but with Murakami in my brain, it all worked out and I got to have a dream that otherwise my mind may have shut down before it started.
I remember having a dream about my father when I was in 6th or 7th grade, and I remember being on Butternut, and he said I'd wake up. But he was alive and talking there, too. It makes me sad, but it feels so nice to revisit him when I can. Even if it's just in some subconscious distorted context.
I'm glad I got to see you, dad. I'm trying to go up to Pennsylvania soon, in the spring, in April. I'll come visit you, and tell you all about it. All about everything.
Love, Lizzie. x
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