Dream come true

This may come as a surprise to the embattled, cynical, and sober among you, but dreams come true. I am not talking about long shots and Oscar winners, not Lady Gaga, Messi, and Sonia Sotomayor. I mean everyone. All of you, everywhere. Everyone will have dreams come true.

Yes, of course there's a catch. There are plenty of catches, but that doesn't change it or make it untrue. Nevertheless, yes.

We don't really know which dreams will come true.

Look behind you. There is a trail of dreams. We are dreamers. They trail behind us like clouds. Don't worry about them. They are not broken dreams, just dreams. They were never meant to all come true. That would cause the world to dissolve into a kaleidoscope of madness. Only a few dreams come true. You generally won't even expect it when they do. You might not even recognize a dream coming true until you get the right angle on it and you say

Oh.

I dreamed this.

Then you should try and enjoy it. Because it happens, but not a lot, not a lot at all.

Today of all days I will not tell you about a big dream come true. It is private and it would not serve so well as explanation to all this anyway. I will tell you about a smaller dream come true. A dream that I just noticed come true, with an enchanted realization, in the past few days. A smaller dream, yes, but no dream that comes true can ever be that small.

I dreamed this dream when I was 12 years old. I am not actually sure I wasn't as much as two or three years older than that, but the crude, childish lines of the articulation of the dream make me happier when I put it closer to childhood. But I don't want to misrepresent, so, 12 it is.

I dreamed of a house. I got in my mind a kind of fantasy house. People I loved would all live in that house. I had it all worked out. Of course, as I maybe only loved my cousin Jimmy at that point in my life, all these people were illusions, placeholders. I just wanted love there, and security, but didn't know how to picture it. The house I struggled to picture as well. It was in the woods, on a big lake. I drew pictures of it. I made a drawing of it with markers on the back of an old poster. It was surrounded by pines, on a little hill up over the lake. It was all by itself. Because I had never seen houses I loved and had not yet feverishly developed my imagination, I borrowed from a large A-frame cabin I had briefly visited and from the house I lived in. There was plenty of heavy wood. Balconies, like the one my parent's room had, dominated my design. How extraordinary, I thought, to have balconies overlooking something safe, wonderful, and beautiful, like a lake.

That was pretty much it. The dream, toyed with for a few months, was forgotten not long after, though the poster lingered on my wall for a few years. Clouds trailing behind, an untouched memory sleeping alongside who knows how many of my old dreams.

And then, a bit less than 40 years later I am sitting in this house. Pine trees are here. A lake greater than I could imagine, and likewise with love, one person, but perfect and all around me. We are living, for a moment, in that house. The balcony, heavy wood, runs 60 feet along our windows, all facing the lake down below us. We are alone floating in a dream. I had this dream, and now here it is.

Well I'll be.

I have heard the cautionary phrase "Be careful what you wish for" and I say "Or not." You never know what'll work out, and though the world throws its dark tricks is is as likely to play ones made of perfect light as well.