Here I am, drinking reheated decaf coffee at 3:20am. Lately, my nights have been restless and I run through an exhausting series of dreams until I get up because I’m too tired to have another one. This last cinematic run got me up and cursing, dreaming of a place long gone from my childhood. I spent the entire dream trying to clean, organize, and rebuild a home that fell from possibility into tragedy. That my metaphors in dreams are lazier than my waking writing should be a relief, except that sometimes it saddens and bewilders me. I am nearing 60 years old and still dream of repairing my foundation.
As childhoods go, mine was messy and unstable and damaging, but I’ve done a couple periods of good therapy. Like a lot of people, I know the language. I know how to reframe, shift perspective, intellectually think through the bits and bobs that may not have made sense to me as a child, but now seem fairly clear as an adult. I’ve restored relationships, set personal boundaries (which are the only kind you can set), and worked at building a sense of internal trust. This is all to say that I’m doing the work. Why do I keep haunting myself?
Sometimes I write things off as hormonal shifts, seasonal changes, or just exhaustion, but when I see the house on the lake, which sounds wealthier and more romantic than it was, I am overwhelmed with sadness.
My stepfather bought the property in the 70s – an abandoned gas station and behind it, on a hill, a campground and showerhouse. Every summer we would leave our crowded apartment above the town’s main street and go to the lake, while he and my mother began to repair and build. A talented builder, he turned a gas station into a two-story home with a deck, high ceilings, windows with a view to the lake. My brothers and sister and I would climb the willow tree, swim in the lake, and play on the concrete platforms meant for campers. There was a large, flat rock at the top of the hill that I could lay on in the sun, while butterflies and birds flew over me. In rural Iowa, the sky was open and the possibilities endless.
My outside time, daydreaming and having little adventures, was that slice of childhood that I would call idyllic. This is perhaps why, when I feel the beat of adult responsibility and stress, going outside saves me. It is why I spend hours in the garden or hike in the woods and why I love, with almost a desperation, my little urban yard full of rabbits and blue jays and bees. Books were the other place where I felt safe and I am currently in a room full of them, where they are stacked on the floor, haphazard overflows from bookshelves. As an adult, I’ve done a good job nurturing those things that make me, most of the time, feel okay.
That house on the lake was a place of possibility and optimism, but it could not rise above its architects. It could not rise above the drinking, the violence, and the unpredictability. It could not mend and repair the damaged inhabitants. The foundation was unstable before the enterprise began. As metaphor goes, I could easily beat it to death, but it resolves itself. Part of it burns down after most of the family has left. Even later, the carpenter dies, too lost in his addiction to save himself. The children scatter to the four winds. One leaves for the Army, the others fight their own demons in their own time, their relationships forever fractured and unmended.
My home now has only known stability, love, and kindness. My daughter is out in the world with a solid foundation and strong sense of who she is, loved and trusted. I spent a good portion of my life grumpy and resistant to optimism, but that’s the lie I have to learn to undo. I will never stop believing that something can be better, beautiful, or even just slightly more organized. I have lived my life adhering to that belief. No facade that I am hardened to joy or possibility will camouflage that kid who wanted to be loved as is, laying on a rock dreaming of just this moment in time.
The dreams just have to be dreams.
The repair is ongoing.
The restoration has already happened.
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