Should I Stay Or Should I Go Now?

I named this blog post at 5:00 am this morning. It made much more sense at 5:00 am. And I'm writing it now, in broad late morning daylight, before the day goes on too long and it fades away.

I'm trying to figure out what this blog post is about. And I realize that it has many layers and it is about a lot of things. Let's see if we can break them down. Did you ever have a dream that was so vivid, you couldn't get out of it right away when you woke up? I know we've all had vivid dreams but there's this certain sort of dream, that may not even thrill or spook you, but it stays with you when you wake up. If it happens right before you wake up, it can be extremely disorienting and makes the day nearly impossible to start. I can remember that happening once as a child, waking up from one of these dreams into a hazingly brilliant morning. I just couldn't adapt very fast, but I eventually did.

Usually this kind of dream happens in the middle of the night, so more sleep and more dreams will fade it away. You'll still remember it in the morning but you won't be stuck in it, in that way, where it seems hard to separate pieces of your real life from pieces of your dream life. At 5:00 am (which is totally middle of the night around here), I was trying to piece it all together - the pieces of the dream, the pieces of my past that the dream put me in and the pieces of my real life. I asked myself "Should I stay or should I go now" because I knew I had a choice to go back to sleep and dream some more and let the dream fade back to a comfortable background. That's what I did. I decided to go, but I remember it all.

The dream. In it, I somehow lived close to Hoboken/NYC. This was once a reality. I left the house with Scarlet at what I thought was a decent hour, but soon 1:00 am and then 2:00 am came around. It didn't matter in Hoboken - the streets were filled. I kept trying to find the NYC skyline to show Scarlet the lights where the towers used to be. Once in real life I drove alone to Hoboken to do that - when the lights were first lit. I kept checking my phone to see if Cassidy was wondering why I had the toddler in the middle of the night in Hoboken, NJ. My iPhone was dying. I was wearing Scarlet in my old Ergo, which at two seems unlikely, but she was weightless and asleep in my jacket. I kept running into high school classmates - some I ignored and some I stopped to talk to. Suddenly the world was in daylight and Hoboken was a labyrinth. I was lost on an ocean road and then trapped in the most vivid carnival/circus world I ever imagined. It was so bright that when I woke up and had to go to the bathroom in real life, which only happens to me when pregnant, our normally bright striped shower curtains looked black and white because they were still muted from the colors of the dream I couldn't quite shake.

And that was it. And I woke up later this morning, not feeling disoriented, but remembering that I had named this blog post at 5:00 am and just maybe I wanted to see where it would lead; what it would bring up to write it down.

And it made me remember the last time I went to Hoboken (in real life) - almost exactly two years ago. We were visiting friends in Jersey City with our then seven-month-old. I had a funeral for a dear friend's mom somewhere in Jersey and I maneuvered my way through the Turnpike and Parkway and whatever-else, all alone, to get to the funeral and back. It makes my chest hurt to think about how engorged I must have been to be away from Scarlet for hours without breastfeeding?? Maybe not. Then later that night, we met my sisters and some friends for a rousing girls' night out in Hoboken while our friends and Cassidy watched Scarlet for the night. (Again, my chest hurts to think about)

We walked near the waterfront/skyline that night. How could we not?

The dream and the memory it brought up remind me of a different time - the way I used to travel the tri-state world at all hours of the day/night without a backwards glance or second thought. Youth. Sigh. Yet I also managed to do it with a seven-month-old, and quite comfortably in my dream with a two and a half-year-old. Strapped to my stomach, light as a feather. I think that means something. But I don't know what. It felt so real and so touchable. Again.

And I think maybe that's the point. Sometimes there's a fine line between dreams and reality. My mind always knows the difference but with my heart, it isn't always so.