On the Jazz: I Dream of Shower Curtains and Doctor Brain

Last night I had a lot of strange dreams. I dreamed that a whole bunch of girlfriends and I were discussing a movie, and a friend I found the perfect Christmas present for a friend I've been stumped about for ages. I had found all the old nostalgic computer games we used to play in junior high available for the game systems she and her husband have. The games were only $5 each. It was going to be glorious. The look on her face when she got a copy of the Lost Island of Doctor Brain and Quest for Glory would be fantastic. The absolutely perfect present, so much so that when I woke it took until I got to school this morning to realize that it wasn't real. But after that dream is when the real weird dream started.

I was getting married, and I was trying to decide what to wear. Back in the bedroom that was mine all growing up, I tried on several skirts and shirts that I had brought with me from my apartment for the occasion, only to realize I'd forgotten the shoes to match. Getting desperate (We needed to leave for the wedding soon!), I ran down the hall and asked Mom if I could wear her wedding dress. It's not my dream design, but I liked the idea of wearing my mother's dress down the isle--and I would be walking down the isle (It was going to be a Catholic wedding at this point in the dream, although later in the dream it was a church gym wedding, uck.) Then we could grab some flowers from the front garden and put them in my hair, just like Mom did for her wedding! Perfect. Problem resolved, I quickly put on Mom's wedding dress, which was conveniently hanging in her closet. Then I hurried off to the wedding, which we were apparently quite late for, so late we never had time to put on jewelry, carry a bouquet, put the flowers in my hair, or even have Dad snap a few pictures since we hadn't hired a photographer. At least my hair looked fantastic: it was much longer than the shoulder-length layers I have now, and it was elaborately curled and styled in a trailing up-do.

It was raining hard outside the church, and I had to dash inside. The ceremony itself is pretty hazy. Apparently I married some guy I knew in high school. That's pretty much all that can be said about him. He wasn't a guy I had a crush on, or one I was particularly good friends with, we did go on a date, once, but mostly he was just there. After the ceremony I changed out of the dress and sat on the porch back at home with my mom. I slowly began to realize that as far as "my dream wedding" went, it was a bit of a disappointment. No pictures, no perfect dress, rain dampened hair without the flowers that would have made my mother's dress the perfect choice, and a plain ceremony in a nearly undecorated gym, to a man whose last name I barely remembered. In fact, when I tried to say my new name in the dream, I had to think a minute, and now I realize I got it wrong. In the dream I realized that I would no longer be "Miss E." to my students, and that "Mrs. Logan" sounded awfully grown-up and boring (And it's the wrong name!). This is when I began to get the idea there was something strange about my wedding. Why hadn't it been planned properly? Why was it so rushed? Why did I have to think so hard to remember my husband's last name? But I was already married, and everyone around me acted as if it was completely normal, so I tried not to question too much.

However, my confusion grew when, we sat on the porch, Amber came walking up the driveway. To be clear, I have never met Amber. She just married one of my closest guy friends from high school a week or so ago, and I'm headed to their wedding reception on Friday. So to see her strolling up the driveway on my wedding day was a surprise. Apparently she had been talking to Tommie (a friend of my brother's wife's mother's), and had somehow learned from her that I had made a lot of big life decisions lately. She had come to discuss them with me and see if I was 100% sure about all of them. She didn't even know I had gotten married. (This confused me further. As I apologized for not telling her and her husband, one of my closest friends, about my wedding, I wondered, Why hadn't I told them? Why were none of my friends at the wedding? No Jeni, no Di, no Allie, no sisters or brothers or college roommates. In fact, where was my husband right now? The wedding was over, why was I sitting on the front porch of my parents house in a t-shirt talking to my mom and my friend's wife whom I'd never met?)

I continued to try and explain myself and my wedding to her, because she was clearly confused by my sudden marriage, and my brain began to reel. It should be noted that we were no longer talking on the porch at this point. We were in the backyard, and I was wearing a backpack with glider wings attached and was trying to catch air on the Idaho breeze while explaining my terribly confusing wedding, as well as my life decisions, to Amber. The more I tried to explain to her, the more confused I got, and not even the prospect of flying with my glider wings could distract me. It occurred to me that, now that I was married, I was going to have to stop seeing the boy I'd been sort of dating. Hmmm, I thought, that was poor planning on my part. I should have thought of that. The dream finally ended with me pausing in my muddled explanation to finally wonder, "Why in hell did I marry that boy?" and realizing that I had absolutely no idea and that I had probably just messed up the rest of my life.

If I had to guess at the origins and meaning of this dream, I would trace it to a few things: First, two boys I once had epic, long-term crushes on got married in the last two weeks. Not only that, but people have been talking to me about marriage an awful lot in the last week. There were a few people over the week, many of whom I did not expect to bring up marriage, of all conversation topics. Then I spent Saturday catching up with a girl friend who was having boy trouble, and she spent a lot of time on the subject. Then the next three people I talked to also brought it up. Sunday morning my climbing partner brought it up, my sister and I talked about it, I'm headed to one of my friend's receptions this week, and the other boy actually called me this week and we talked about his wedding for close to an hour. When I went to sleep last night, my brain must have had some things to work through on the subject.

If I were to hazard an interpretation, I would say that my brain was working through the fact that I'm not married, despite wanting to be married since the age of 12. Then I think my brain and emotions were working through all of that to the conclusion, which I often conclude and reconclude, that it's o.k. Marriage wouldn't necessarily be the best thing right now, and if I could tear off and marry a decent boy tomorrow for the sake of being married, I'd almost certainly regret it.