Dream a Little Dream

During this pandemic, I'm not alone in experiencing vivid dreams. I've been reading several research studies on how dreams have altered because of the quarantines. I've included a link at the bottom of this post if you'd like to follow up on dreams. In the meantime, here's one I had just in the nick of time...right before the quarantine.

 

Mount Baldy

By Terri Elders

“Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others.” --Jonathan Swift

In hindsight I should have guessed right away why Grandpa Louie popped up in my dream. Decades had passed since I’d thought much about him. Then, this past Thanksgiving, my younger brother began to reminisce about our years as tots and teens, back in the ‘40s and ‘50s.

“Dad never had any time for me, but Grandpa Louie always did,” he said. “He let me follow him around from the time I could toddle. He taught me a lot of things in those days. He always seemed protective.”

I’d never thought of Grandpa as protective…generous, maybe. He always handed a shiny quarter to each of us kids when we’d visit him. But protective? Not to my knowledge. What I remembered most about him was how I envied his claim to be eagle-eyed.

“I can see a fly light on Mount Baldy,” he’d brag, every time I helped him pick walnuts in his grove outside Ontario, CA. He’d shade his eyes with his calloused palm and peer twenty miles northward at the San Gabriel Mountain’s snow-covered caps. At 11, I’d hover by his side, aquiver with envy. Because of severe astigmatism and myopia, I could barely even make out Mount Baldy. I’d doubted that I even could spot a fly if one landed on my foot. 

 “You get the lower branches,” he’d say, handing me a basket, “and I’ll climb the ladder to knock down nuts from the higher ones.” Then we’d spend the rest of the morning harvesting the walnuts that Grandma Gertie would later candy or stir into her dreamily ambrosial banana bread. 

Now here he suddenly was, again in his walnut grove, me by his side. I’d awakened, puzzled. I had no need to be picking walnuts these days. I doubted they even grew near Ontario anymore. I live in a senior-living complex close to the ocean and far from the San Gabriel Mountains. In fact, despite the more smog free air of the 21^st century, I realized, it had been ages since I’d seen Mount Baldy. 

I recalled that just recently I’d heard the San Gabriel mountains sported snow down to the 2000-foot level. As I’d recently driven eastward on the freeway on a clear late winter afternoon, I should have been able to spy them in the distance. Maybe even single out Mount Baldy. But I hadn’t. I wondered why. Just a year ago I’d seen them clearly.

Could Grandpa be sending me a message related to this? I made an appointment with my optometrist. I hadn’t visited him for over three years.

“When did you have your cataract surgery?” he asked.

“Thirteen years ago,” I answered.

“Well, cataract lenses don’t wear out, but they can become clouded. I’m scheduling you to see an ophthalmologist to determine if you need your lenses cleared. I’ll also write you a new glasses prescription. You’re also are showing some signs of age-related macular degeneration.”

He peered down at his notes from my previous visit.

“Are you still taking the lutein supplement I recommended to slow down the progression of age-related damage to your eyes?”

I nodded. 

“Well, keep on taking those. And eat plenty of dark green veggies, carrots and walnuts. They’re all rich in the antioxidants you need to help your vision. So is green tea.”

 I remembered how Grandpa Louie carefully tended his vegetable garden and how Grandma Gertie was always cooking up what she called “a mess of greens” and grating carrots for salad after he’d bring in a basket of fresh produce. And all the walnuts. No wonder he had such great eyesight. 

I visited the ophthalmologist who confirmed that my left eye lens cover had become cloudy. She cleared it up in fewer than five minutes with painless laser treatment. I soon got new prescription glasses as well. Once again, I can distinguish aqua from turquoise. I now can spot those tiny cracks in the pavement that I’d tripped over this past year. 

A few weeks later, Grandpa Louie showed up in my dreams once again. This time we were yanking carrots from his vegetable patch. Grandpa didn’t brag one bit, but he turned toward me , handed me a gnarled carrot and winked. I’d winked back. Across the decades and dimensions, we ratified a mission accomplished.

How had Grandpa Louie had the foresight seventy years ago to be growing and ingesting all the essential ingredients that lead to great vision health? Now I finally had an insight. Unlike me, who’d been born with astigmatism and myopia, he’d likely been blessed with great vision from the start. But additionally, he’d also been a visionary. 

What’s more, just as my little brother had claimed at Thanksgiving, protective. Now, as I sip a cup green tea, I realize that unlike Grandpa Louie, I likely never will glimpse that elusive fly circling Mount Baldy. But at least now I can enjoy the panorama of the San Gabriel Mountains, still draped in snow.

https://theconversation.com/what-dreams-may-come-why-youre-having-more-vivid-dreams-during-the-pandemic-137387