Let me tell you about this dream I had.
Only, it one thousand percent wasn’t a dream and I one trillion percent know that I was wide-awake the whole time. With me? It’s weird.
So. The day of my Dad’s birthday- what would’ve been his 65th birthday- we celebrated with his favorite meal from the Colombian chicken place down the street. (That’s a joke- they were all his favorite meal.) We sang the Beatles and Springsteen and- even though it was tough- I made myself listen to a bunch of the Beach Boys stuff. I waited for a sign that he was digging on our “birthday party,” even though I knew he was- and I knew he knew that I knew he was. Still, I waited. For the usual signs like impossible cloud shapes and immediate song choices and that unmistakable warmth of his hand on the back of my neck. And there were moments, absolutely. Nothing crazy AHA, but moments.
I went to bed that night missing him. (That’s a joke- I miss him every night and morning.) I fell asleep around 10:30 and didn’t dream, not even once. However, at around 12:30 (or thereabouts), I shot up in bed and was suddenly wiiiiiide awake. It was dead silent. Completely dark. And there were no traces of the crazy thunderstorm that had rocked Chicago mere hours before. So, there was no reason for me to be fully, heart-poundingly awake. (The noise from the baby monitor and street traffic had also dulled to nonexistence, which happened only one other time: the night my Dad died. But that’s a whole ‘nother story.)
I did what any rational human being would do: I walked to the bedroom window and looked out at my block. Nothing. I looked up into the sky. Nothing. Well, nothing except for the crazy wall of clouds and fog that had been there since roughly dinnertime the night before.
Then, all of a sudden- which is a phrase that is overused but in this case THE ONLY WAY TO DESCRIBE IT…
The clouds changed. You know how clouds can take the shape of really distinct animals or objects and folks watching are usually amazed at the accuracy in an otherwise improbable setting? This wasn’t that at all.
The clouds changed to form perfectly proportioned dogs in the absence between the clouds. In a pea soup-thick haze of clouds, two extraordinarily clear and bright dogs were shaped in the negative space of the sky. One was a bigger dog, one was a smaller puppy. But here’s the first weird thing: size-aside, they were carbon copies of each other. Same terrier head, same spiky tail. My first thought was, “Wow! Those sure are two dogs in the sky!”
And then they started running.
The clouds, which had been seemingly frozen in space, now began to whip across the sky and the dog shapes with them- but only the legs were moving, back and forth, back and forth.
This was not one of those moments where clouds mutate as they move. The dog shapes remained exactly as they had been, except for those sprinting legs, big dog being chased by little dog.
I swear I was not high.
I swear I was awake. (By this point I could’ve piloted a jet I was so alert.)
The dogs ran and ran and ran and, just before they left the vista of my bedroom window, a cloud rat appeared. And the dogs froze.
This was another perfectly shaped creature between the clouds and I had zero doubt in my mind that this was a perching rat, never doubt that I can pick out an awful rat creature from one gazillion paces.
And when I say the clouds froze, I mean all the movement completely ceased. The dogs’ legs stopped running and they paused, mid-sprint.
(Side note: I hate rats. I hate rats. My Dad wouldn’t send me rats. Would my Dad send me rats? I was onboard with the puppies because my Dad loved puppies. EVERYONE loves puppies. But the rat? Definitely not sent by the guy who lived through this fixing-up of this former rat palace.)
Confused/concerned by the rat, I got back into bed. I almost woke P.J. to tell him about the weird, cosmic thing happening just outside our home- but decided that, naw, I’ll fill him in later.
From my side of the bed I could still see part of the dogs in the sky, so I absolutely could see the moment the dogs took another step apart and revealed a perfect hole in the clouds. Through it shined a star so unbelievably bright that I knew it was absolutely a planet. (Nerd alert:) I picked up my phone to check my constellation app. (Oh, like you don’t have one on your bedside table, too.) I held it up against the star to see what the heck was beaming so brightly.
And a cluster of three planets appeared on the screen.
Based on where I was laying, and where the planets were in relation to the night sky, the app informed me that I was either looking at Mars, or Saturn, or- just above it- Jupiter.
I sat back up and, being the weirdo that I am, said “Thank you for the trippy sky pictures and unwise number of planets! If this is a message, I’m not sure I’m getting it, but it’s appreciated nonetheless!”
Then I went back to bed.
And didn’t sleep for a long, long time.
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