I've read . . .

we ought to write our dreams. So here goes.

Last night I dreamed I needed to go downstairs for some task which seemed terribly important. I hadn’t time to take the stairs so I decided to jump down. As soon as I felt myself in the air I knew this was a mistake. I could break my legs, be otherwise injured, maybe seriously, maybe even die. I prayed, asked for help, for protection when I reached the floor below.

As I landed, not on my heels or with my feet flat (thoughts of which and the attendant dangers had come into my mind during my descent), but on the balls and toes, a soft landing, one I could hardly feel, I knew all was well. It was as if I had floated down. The landing or the dream, I don’t know which, brought me a sense of well-being, of joy even., and I saw the end of it as my prayer answered.

Always with dreams I wonder why. My mother used to say that eating chocolate at bedtime brought nightmares. This was no nightmare, though it could have turned out to be. She said nothing about what you might dream if you ate nothing at bedtime after eating nothing all day. Maybe dreams of flying or floating and of safe landings come from fasting.

Sometimes with dreams I wonder what. Am I supposed to understand or learn something from it? Often dreams are nonsense, a jumble of people and events and places and those inexplicable instant changes in the elements of the dream, and I dismiss them, count them as a mix of what I've eaten and seen and heard and thought through the day. I don't know if that's right.

This dream had its nonsense aspect. I mean, I would never climb over the banister and jump downstairs. I might try to hurry down, take all fifteen steps at a brisk pace—harder and harder to do, you know. But mostly this dream was not nonsense.

Perhaps this dream means nothing. Perhaps it means the simple thing it seemed to mean.