How A Dream Changed My Life …

.. and a 5-year-old turned into someone else

We all dream. We all analyze our countless emotions, sensations and joys through a largely unknown process and end up scratching our heads every morning wondering … why was I riding a bus with no pants on while sharing the seats around me with a marching band?

Our dreams convey messages to us in a language that we’re still trying to understand. They appear to reflect upon what we did and what we thought that day and whether or not we did a good job of it.

I have had dreams as vivid and thrilling as a low-budget Avenger movie and yet, have had to “sit through” others that were far more Fellini than Spielberg, and left me with an aching in the back of my neck.

They are seldom to the point. Frequently misunderstood and for the most part appear unable to explain the reason they exist.

Perhaps dreams are our way of communicating with ourselves at a level we are only just evolving into. A process of review that enables us to revise our intentions, reinvent our goals and become a better version of ourselves before embarking on a new day?

I first had this one dream when I turned 5 years-old in 1958. I was living in Brooklyn at that time, in an area called Bensonhurst, while attending kindergarten at PS 247.

I’d like to say I was an average kid from a typical Italian family back in the day, but truth be told, I have never been average or this side of normal for as long as I can remember.

If I was sitting, I was thinking. If I was running, I was thinking of what it felt like to run. Why the wind felt cool or hot against my face and why I could not run fast enough to leave the ground. I observed the world around me like a beggar at a banquet and was never satisfied with the answers my parents or any adults gave to me. I was frequently upset at being treated like a child and could not understand why the fact that I had to look up to most people meant I was incapable of understanding what they had to say.

I resented short unhelpful answers, like: because or never mind or occasionally, “For Chrissakes, give me a break.” I wanted answers. I wanted to know where I was, “Yes, Brooklyn, but can you be more specific?” I thought it would be helpful to know why my mind never stopped running and if it meant that there was something wrong with me.

And like most children, I was open to the universe. I could see sadness walking down the street toward me. I didn’t see dead people, but I could clearly see hope and frustration, joy and defeat in the people I watched coming out of the subway station at 20th Avenue and 64th Street.

I played with reckless abandon but would never miss an opportunity to watch someone cross the street. Did they look both ways? Were they happy? Did they smoke? Were they yelling at their kid for not listening to them? The reasons behind my quest for everything, remained largely unseen throughout my first few years. Perhaps this is why the dream came.

The first time I had this dream, it went something like this.

I woke up, (within my dream) into a place that was filled with a darkness that was not yet complete. Dusk perhaps, the end of a day, when all things were beginning to slow down. When the world became a little quieter and the words and thoughts within us could then to be heard.

I walked a little and came upon a fence. A wrought iron fence, much taller that my 5-year-old body stood and painted black. The gate was open; a little bent, a little crooked, but I was through it easily and once inside realized that I was walking into a cemetery.

In the area of Brooklyn where I lived there were a number of very large cemeteries that had been in place for over 100 years. Some still open and accepting new tenants, others closed for business, where only the caretakers moved through, pulling weeds, resetting stones, paying homage to those that had been there for such a long time.

My cemetery, the one that I found myself in one night, was large and hilly and filled with headstones of all shapes and sizes. I didn’t understand why I was there. Even within a dream, where nothing is ever very clear or straightforward, I got the feeling that this was all very impromptu. It wasn’t planned that I should be there. No one was ready to receive me — I simply showed up one night and took a walk.

And the walk took me to where there was a series of newer graves, some with old blackened headstones and others with large mausoleums — small mansions that appeared out of place and pretentious. Even to a 5-year-old.

It was in this area that I found one headstone that stopped my heart. Not literally, just within the dream. You see, I knew, even without seeing my name etched into the stone, that it was mine. And as I looked up from it, looked out over the rest of the cemetery and onto the streets beyond the gates and fences, I realized that nothing was there. That is, there was no one to call out to. No one to see where I was. No one — because I was alone.

Somehow, all the wisdom and imagination I could muster as a 5-year-old, told me that I was, at that moment, the last person on earth. How that could be, how I ended up there, and whether there was an actual place or not, was all unknown to me. It was my dream, but I had no idea why I was in it.

To say I felt relief when I woke up that first morning, was a massive understatement. I looked around my room, taking inventory of my books and toys and the sounds of the home where I lived. I heard my mother’s voice, the cars moving in the streets outside. My own heartbeat, pounding evenly inside my chest. I was alive. The dream had ended and I was safe.

But it would return. Many times. And then, just as suddenly, a month or so after my 5th birthday, it stopped. Just like that.

So, as the five-year-old, kindergarten student that I was, I began an analysis. Where did that dream come from? What the fuck, Aunt Sadie, did it actually mean and why was I having it?

I never came to a single conclusion about that series of dreams or understood fully why they came to me at that time in my life. But I did know without a doubt that it changed me.

From that point on, I ceased being just a child.

No, it wasn’t like the movie Big, where I woke up as an adult. I still played, still went to first grade and then second grade. Still had to listen to my parents and other adults — just because. But I don’t ever remember just being a kid again. I never looked at the world around me, just as a kid would. I saw it as endless and timeless and filled with danger and joy and infinite possibilities. I was “gifted” with a burgeoning sense of responsibility and whether I was ready to shoulder that burden or not, was simply not an option. There it was.

The years passed. Childhood became adolescence and gradually turned to adulthood. But a part of me was already there. Had been since the dream first came to me.

Did it make me wise beyond my years — LOL! I’d like to think it made me more connected, more appreciative of the world around me and everyone in it.

Like Scrooge getting a second chance with the Ghost of Christmas Future, I was given a look at the world as it would be, if everyone, including me, didn’t get their shit together and think beyond just themselves. And like Scrooge, I got the message.

Being plugged into the universe, is like sitting 3 inches in front of a Who concert. It’s loud and frenetic and bursting with drama, and yet, lyrical and composed and filled with meaning.

Ever since, I’ve appreciated dreams, whether I understand them or not. And insight, intuition, self-awareness and every other human trait that gives us a leg up on what’s in store for us and what we can do to change it. It’s a gift I didn’t want at first and felt put upon by receiving it.

But today, I just smile and say thank you.