What Lies Ahead of Us

These days, I sleep in "shifts" and rarely dream. Two hours sleep, bathroom, two hours sleep, bathroom, three hours sleep, up for the day. Which adds up to something close to what I'm supposed to be getting, but not the quality, continuous hours that I actually need.

Anyway, during my last "sleep shift" this morning, I had a dream that my grandson and I were traveling through the city, on our way to some sort of party. Right, my 14-year-old, socially-inept and pathologically-withdrawn grandson and I on our way to a party. (Although, to be honest, I'm probably the geriatric version of him.) Hilarious.

So we're walking through the South Side, the part of town where my wife and I lived when we were first married and which has since plummeted into that urban abyss of drugs, burned-out buildings, and drive-by shootings that has befallen cities across America.

Did I mention that we were walking? My grandson having recently, in real life, lost his phone and I, in the dream, having apparently lost my car because there we were, walking to catch a bus in the worst part of town in order to go to a party. Dreams.

As we're approaching the bus stop on, I think, South Avenue, I turn to look at him and he's gone. My grandson is missing, in the worst part of the city, without a phone. This kid whom I'd so often implored to look out the window as we were driving, instead of at the GD phone, so that he'd have some understanding of where we were and how we'd gotten there.

I said his name, a couple of times, said it without hope of ever finding him, as if the distance that had suddenly and inexplicably come between us was all but insurmountable.

And then I awoke.

And wondered if this dream is in fact what lies ahead of us, in our waking lives...

LPK
Dreamwidth
12.31.2017

Decision

In the basement workshop, where I haven't been in weeks, are the neatly stacked pieces of a complete tool stand based on the design of the work benches which my grandson and I constructed over the summer.

The tool stand was supposed to be one of the final pieces of shop equipment to be built before we took on whatever might be requested by his mom's or my daughter's households or might simply occur to us as something interesting or fun to build.

But once the summer was over, and school had started again, there was always a reason why it was inconvenient for him to come here to work, earn a couple of bucks, and maybe learn a few things.

And so, our "future last project" has sat and gathered dust, leaning against the layout table where I had supposed he would mark up the pieces for drilling and final assembly.

Once or twice, in the interim, I tried to motivate him by explaining that this project was important to me, not just as the building of a new workshop, but as part of an ongoing effort to build a new life for myself.

Because of that, I told him, I might have to go ahead with its completion on my own, if he was unable or unwilling to find the time to help. But that I didn't want to do that because I had always intended for the completed workshop to be "ours."

And so it's sat. And I have sat, watching the hours and days slip by as they tend to do, whether well-used or serving only as the monotonous markers of an unfulfilling and directionless life.

Now, on the eve of a New Year, that universal marker of beginnings and endings of things, I've made a decision.

I've decided that I'm going to put this project away and go ahead with other things. I know that I need to get my own life moving and that I can't place the burden or responsibility for that on anyone else, including my grandson.

But I also can't bring myself to give up the hope that one day, on his own, he may decide to re-engage with what we started together. At least to the extent of completing this last piece of it.

Until then it will sit, as time and this life passes it by. And that's the last that I'm going to say about it...

LPK
Dreamwidth
12.31.2017