My sleeping son, my dreaming son. My son, the dream.********
My good friend Wade stopped in yesterday to talk about life and sip tea. He lives in Boulder, and I hadn't seen him in two-and-a-half years. He got to meet Jack for the first time, which was a full-circle moment: Wade knew me back when I yearned for a baby. He even knew me back when I pretended that I didn't yearn for a baby because it hurt too darn much to think that motherhood might never be part of my life.
They don't make 'em like Wade anymore. When I think of unadulterated kindness, I think of him. He's honest, poised, and gentle, and he's a guy who truly listens to his intuition. Because of all of these wonderful things about him, I barely even remember that the first time he spoke to me, he snapped like a scared snake. But in his defense, I was the timid new hostess of the fine dining restaurant where he waited tables under too many stressors, and I was asking too many questions. He apologized later that night, and he's never said a cross word to me since. I never stopped asking him questions, on-account-of he has super-interesting answers.
Wade's intuition brought him to Nashville for a whirlwind visit, and I'm better for it. I remembered how good it was, not so long ago, when I'd fire up my cast-iron tea set to prepare for his visit. The last time I saw him was a week after I moved into a place of my own [see my last post], and he was preparing to move his family to Colorado. He brought me an old heirloom traveling trunk, telling me it was too bulky to move halfway across the country, and also saying it was a safe place to keep my dreams.
Many nights, I sat on that trunk alone in my new place, drinking Earl Grey and listening to Chet Baker, staring out the door into a magnolia tree and waiting for my dreams to get bold enough to pop out of the trunk beneath me. Who knew that four-foot box could hold so many new friends, lovers, magical meditative evenings, and an entirely new life. My son must have been horribly uncomfortable in there, but golly--I let him pop out of there as quickly as I could. Of course, I know he just wanted to get to the giant boobies full of yummy milk.
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