Death, The Prom, and an Onion

Early this morning, I watched my father bleed to death from his head after falling on the wet sidewalk. I tried to scream for my mother, who was far ahead of us, her arms full of sale light bulbs, but no sound came from my choked throat. I cried myself awake.

I lamented a few weeks ago that I haven’t been remembering dreams. I started a medication to reduce the severity and frequency of my migraines. I don’t think it’s successful, but I often sleep through the night without a 2:00 a.m. trip to the bathroom. I’m also in a staying-up-late pattern. The girl who used to be abed by 9:00 is now sitting tensely in a chair watching Law & Order: SVU or, and most often, glued to The Order of the Phoenix. Last night, in the book, Harry Potter saw himself as a snake, biting Mr. Weasley. He woke up in a panic, and his dream turned out to be a real-time look at events.

I did not, however, wake up and call my parents to make sure my father was still alive. In my dream, we were shopping. I hadn’t been shopping with them all trip, and my dad usually bought me a whole new wardrobe each season. (This part is true; I tag along with them to the beach each summer, and I shop for clothes, still, at 43.) But my mother wouldn’t let me try on any clothing. She had found a store with a sale on special light bulbs, which she couldn’t pass up. She even had decided to apply for a job at the light bulb store, so she could get a discount. My mother, who drives a Lexus. I had just discovered, around the corner of the shop, a very nice skirt that I knew wouldn’t look good on me, even though it was black with big appliquéd dogs. I wanted to try it on, but my mother called to me from outside the storefront window.

I ran out of the store, and it was raining. My dad turned in the opposite direction to get the car but changed his mind and came bounding back toward me, out of the street and up onto the sidewalk. Bounding. My 300-pound father. I remember thinking, in my dream, that my dad was going to have a heart attack. He hadn’t run to or from anything in about two decades, since he had broken his leg in seven places while trying to escape some secretaries trying to mess up his hair. His last jump, in the dream, was a splash in a big puddle, where he slipped and fell backward, cracking his head open. He was calling for me to help him. Blood was trickling from his mouth.

This is where you came in.

Right now, the rain is beating down on the air conditioning unit beside me. I have just called my father to tell him it may get slippery later and to be careful walking. I told him I’d had a dream that he fell. He said, “Awww. I’m very happy you called.”

This is not the only dream I remember from last night. In another, I had gone to a high-school prom, I guess as a chaperone, and some of the women I was with were underdressed, in sweats, and the rich children were making fun of us. I’m wearing purple, painted-on sweatpants as I write this, and I’m going tomorrow to teach a class of wealthy high-school girls how to make mosaics.

When I awoke at 5:00 from the nightmare of my dad’s fall, I thought I surely wouldn’t fall back to sleep. My heart was racing, and I was sad. But I soon drifted off and dreamed of Mackane, a boy from my daughter’s class, who told me my breath smelled worse than an onion.

And with that, I am off to brush my teeth.