Neither JT nor I have had any sleep when I come in for my training session at the gym late Friday afternoon. My deficit is just from the night before—he has been suffering for a week.
Business is good, so that can’t be the problem, but as a late Friday afternoon client I consider it my calling to be entertaining when he’s this tired. So, I tell him about the fox on the porch, my latest physical with my new baby doctor (she doesn’t deliver babies, she is a baby), and that I’ve learned the need for sleep is actually the need to dream.
“You’re not anxious about anything?” I begin, since worry aggravates insomnia.
“Nope. Nothing,” he says, but as we move to the cable pulls, he mentions with pride that his youngest daughter just got her driver’s license.
Hello, Anxiety. Meet JT.
“So, worry just pulled up a chair and plans to stay awhile,” I explain kindly. “Forever,” I add. You have kids; it’s a lifelong sentence.”
We finish with the cable pulls and briefly discuss the possibility of taking a nap instead of working out for the next hour. Who would know? The padded weight benches look pretty comfy when you’re not hefting free weights on them.
“But that,” I say primly, “Would be grossly inappropriate.” We laugh and move to the pull-up bar.
While hoisting my weight against gravity, I explain that researchers have discovered your brain cleans house when you dream — not only filing experiences where they belong in long-term and short-term memory but also sweeping away the amyloid plaque that leads to dementia.
“I just had my yearly physical on zero sleep,” I tell him, “And they made me spell ‘world’ backward to test my memory. But they don’t remember that they use the same word every year!”
“Apple, table, penny,” I say now. “Remember those three words and repeat them before I leave.”
“Easy,” he says.
“I know, right? Now count backward from 100 in primes.”
Because he knows I’m messing with him, he adds 20 pounds to the rowing machine. I protest, and he makes it 25.
“Pot is a popular sleep aid,” I offer, to mulling his problem, “but new research shows that if you smoke a lot you sleep without dreaming and that’s a high price to pay.”
When people who have smoked for years quit using it, their dreams come rushing back—as if someone had dammed the dream ocean, and once the dam breaks, all of the undelivered dreams come crashing to shore, only they are more vivid, more intense, than any kind of normal dream.
I don’t need a change in behavior as a means to memorable dreams. Dreams where you wake up laughing. Dreams where you talk to those on the other side and they talk back. Dreams where you meet people you have yet to meet, and then you meet them.
I’m holding a plank now, faking that I’m not suffering.
“When I was 18, I dreamed I was shot in the chest on a dark street in Baltimore– caught in the crossfire between two gangs. It was so real, so vivid. I looked down, saw the wound, knew I was dying, and you know what word popped into my head?”
JT shakes his head.
“’Darn.’ Like ‘Darn,’ this was such a good book, and now I have to return it unfinished! ‘Darn,’ I have to leave before the movie ends.’
“It didn’t feel like a premonition—because I’d figured out it’s not what you dream; it’s how the dream makes you feel that’s significant. And if that detachment was a glimpse of reality, it has been a gift. I just put that dream in my pocket and left for college.”
Dreams are like stories, I think, as we wrap up. We get to learn from experiences we will never have. So often they are of losing something– your child in a mall, your cellphone in a restaurant, or losing your way.
But some dreams are of angels and reunions, and once, I dreamed that a soft golden energy lifted and carried me over a flooded river where the bridge was submerged, setting me lovingly, tenderly down on the other side. I was transported with such gentleness when I couldn’t see the way. And once I dreamed I met God.
It wasn’t the dream; it was the feeling. A feeling I don’t expect to encounter in my waking life.
I’m picking up my purse to leave now. “What are the three words?” I ask, and he tells me. I wish they had given us words worth remembering.
Whisper, covenant, grace.
A wave of heat envelopes me when I get to the car. I put down the windows, turn up the AC, and head home to a dog who will greet me like I’ve been gone for a month. Does it get better than that?
We are sleeping, beloveds, no matter how real it may seem.
Look around you and know, this is the dream.
