I Can Turn It Down, But I Can't Turn It Off

Last night, I dreamed I promised to take my friend Jackie’s husband home after they’d spent the day with us and ended up leaving him in the red Tacoma all night in the driveway with the driver’s side door ajar because I got distracted by Joe and Jill Biden staying with us overnight.

I don’t know why he didn’t come back into the house (not our real house but an upscaled ranch-style house with a massive open kitchen and for some reason, blue gingham curtains) after oh, say, the first hour, or why I didn’t realize he was still out there until much later in the dream, but dreams don’t seem to care about logic and rationale like that. They’re mostly about color and action and the most unrelated characters coming together naturally to create a little story behind your eyelids while you’re stretched out flat. I really do love Jackie and her husband and would never leave either of them that way in my driveway, no matter what the distraction.

If people you know have ever featured in your dreams, do you tell them? I tread carefully into this territory because no matter how casually I relate the details, it always feels creepy or weird (although I can tell Jackie anything and she won’t judge me. Thanks, Jackie). One of my recent dreams included a co-worker whom I consider a friend (I think she does too), and we were in Spain, walking across the curved clay tile rooftops of the homes in a small town just so we could get to a restaurant that served the best seafood. There were families with small children and we talked with them about how beautiful the sky was that night, all blues and pinks fading into dark velvet with starts glittering. We ate shrimp and the biggest scallops I’ve ever seen, and there was fresh artisan bread—the kind with a crusty exterior that you tear off chunks of and dip in salted herbed olive oil. Little children ran around the tables laughing and enjoying life, and no one seemed fussed by it. A string quartet played in a corner of the main dining area, and after we ate, we moved closer to where they were so we could see how their fingers moved across the instruments. When I shared all this with my friend, she told me that a few years ago she developed an allergy to seafood and can’t touch the stuff now. But she thanked me for including her in my “beautiful escape”. That was nice.

Early in my twenties, someone once described me as having an “active inner life”. At the time, I took it as a compliment and perhaps it was, but I can see how it could easily turn in a different, less flattering direction. Either way, I still claim it because there is a lot going on between my ears, day and night, and I’ve given up trying to turn it off. Down, maybe, to a hum, but it never completely stops. Talking with other writers, it seems we share this trait and have learned to appreciate the both/and benefits rather than simply tolerate it, like an awkwardly placed mole on our faces or a toe that bends a little slightly to the left, making it hard to wear ballet flats comfortably. For a few minutes, I tried to recall my waking hours the day before I had that dream about my friend in Spain and the seafood, just to see if I’d had any contact with her that my brain stored away for later use, and came up empty. It’s fun for a while to try and trace back the origins of our dreams, but also pointless, since the brain does what it wants with all the data it collects and we have little control over any of it. She could have been waiting patiently in there for weeks before appearing as my dinner companion for the evening, eating food that would put her in a world of hurt while awake. I moved on, grateful for the ability to dream in color. I love that.

Recurring dreams are especially fascinating to me, though, and I spend more than a few minutes dissecting them for clues about where I need to pay more attention in “real” life, or what lessons they are trying to teach me about something that happened to me in the weeks or days leading up to that particular night’s slumbering episode. I watch for themes: teeth falling out of my mouth into my cupped hands, running but getting nowhere, and any that include celebrities (I have a few that keep coming back—Sting, Keith Urban, Michael J. Fox. Nothing romantic or sexual, but certainly involving a deep friend connection, like they need my advice or something. Those are delightfully cool to wake up remembering, and I hold onto them as long as I can on the way to work). I have one dream theme that comes around regularly, involving public restrooms, and I wake up having to use our private one downstairs. Nothing too hard to figure out there—I drank too much tea before bed and my dream-mind is helping me avoid an unpleasant disruption involving a middle-of-the-night load of laundry. I did read somewhere that the teeth falling out dream is somehow related to a fear of aging. I couldn’t tell you, but if it comes around again, I’ll look for context from my waking hours and let you know. For now, I’m good with my accumulated years and stories, and grateful for a body that does most of what I ask it to do. Including my teeth.

The business of dream interpretation is complex and imprecise in too many places for me to reliably draw any helpful conclusions. I have dabbled in keeping a dream journal, practiced dream mapping (which is really fun because I get to use colored pencils and markers) and found both experiences quite pleasant. The REM sleep benefits of dreaming are well-researched and established, so there’s that. Mostly, for me, dreams are highly entertaining and enjoyable, even the scary ones that have me sitting bolt upright, checking to make sure Patrick is still breathing next to me and the trucks are not on fire in the driveway (or containing beloved friends I’ve forgotten about). My brain works hard all day long, guiding my footsteps and storing information that I’ll need when I’m making out the grocery list later, and editing most of the inner commentary that is truly best left unsaid. I say let it play all it wants when my eyes are closed and my jaw drops open slightly. Drooling is optional.

For now, it’s enough that I keep waking up.