Dream Worlds

For the last few weeks, I've been having intense dreams. Vivid, full of color, ones that often leave me tired upon waking up. I can't remember most of them. I wake up and the haunting edges of these other worlds are there close enough to touch but not to remember. Because I wake up so often, I can lay awake washed in the emotions of said dreams even if I can not nail down the details. Sometimes though the dreams are so strong that it takes me some time to locate myself in this world.

In the wee hours of this morning, I woke up feeling rather joyful. Puzzled. I had to lay for a moment and sort through the rolling aftereffects of my dream. After a few seconds, I was able to catch hold of a bit of plot. I had dreamed that I found out that I had Down syndrome. I was my age so it was quite a surprise. In the dream, I was confused as to why it had taken so long for everyone to figure it out. But I wasn't sad. I didn't dream of Jude but when I woke up I had this sleepy feeling that she was indeed very much a part of me.

Now that I am awake in this light of morning I am able to analyze beyond the feelings left like a caress from the dream. I can still touch the feeling of joy I felt when waking up to feel Jude so deliciously close to me. As I sit here typing out, trying to grasp at why this dream meant so much, I remember the science that showed how we quite literally carry all our children within us..cells from all my beasties are still in my body. I knew there was something deeper that was going to come from that knowledge....something that would come slowly to me as these thoughts often do. And I suspect that these thoughts slowly migrated to that other world.

What I realized last night is that I had always felt a lingering sadness that there would be this immeasurable distance between Jude and I. That there was a difference that would come between us, a place where I could not reach. Over the last few weeks, I have come to understand that really this difference is part of all human connection. We are limited in how much we are able to understand each other. But I couldn't help but feel that the Down syndrome would make that distance just a bit greater. When I woke up this morning, I felt that perhaps this distance was not so great. That perhaps those cells of Jude that are floating about my own body now that I have carried her inside me have built up a bridge.