All Children Have Dreams...

When I was a child, one of my recurring dreams carried with it the joy of flight. In this dream all that I needed to do was to bend my legs at the knees and swoosh I was off in flight. The wind blew through my hair and with a little practice I was soon navigating the aerial neighborhood above the small housing community we lived in.

Another series of childhood dreams occurred in the vicinity of the bush that grew in the front yard. You see, from the front it looked like an ordinary shrub with a few scattered wood chips that covered its roots. But in my dreams, when I would sneak behind the bush it turned into a magical world filled with dinosaurs and pterodactyls. It was a crossover place with equal parts Where the Wild Things Are and Land of the Lost.

These were the good childhood dreams. There were of course also the dreams in which I wound up walking to school wearing only my underwear. Although I grew more embarrassed with each and every step, I could not stop my forward motion until I would finally wake frantically from my dream right as I was standing in front of my kindergarten class.

Then there was the really bad dream...

In the very worst childhood dream I ever had, I woke up from my dream and I was all alone in our house on Beecher Street. It was a two-story Milwaukee style home built in the 1900s. The only problem was, I was not really awake. It was a dream within a dream! I was scared but I did not know why. Terrified actually.

Something was keeping me trapped in the house and as hard as I tried I could not wake up. If you have ever had a dream such as this, you know the terror of which I speak; the overwhelming feeling of impending doom.

And the doom was consuming me and I felt as though I was going to become the victim of a fate worse than death. I could hardly breathe. I could hardly walk. I could hardly see. I was being overcome by despair.

At the moment when all seemed lost, my brother James entered the front door of my dream and instantly everything was ok. My brother James has always been like that. Even in my dreams he was there protecting me.

I only wish that I could be in his dreams tonight, protecting him the way that he would surely have protected me.