Dreaming is free, but there’s still a price to pay

Sleep was not my friend this week. That full moon made me restless. I tend to dream a lot on any given night, but sometimes the full moon makes the dreams seem a bit more real. The other night, I woke up because I was having a hard time hearing my friend who had called me. The odd thing was, when I opened my eyes, my hand did not have my cell phone in it. The dream was so real it took me a while to get back to sleep.

Those kinds of dreams make me anxious because I don’t know where the idea comes from. It’s not like when you fall asleep watching the Weather Channel and you wake up because you thought you were caught up in some disaster of nature, only to see the show that is on is counting down the top 10 storms of the decade. Those are easy to explain, and it’s pretty easy to get back to sleep after that.

At one point in my life, I was very interested in dreams and their meanings. I have several books describing various theories and interpretations. Some of the information made sense, but some of it stretched the limits of even my overactive imagination. I tried to keep a dream journal, but it always seemed that the more I tried to capture my dreams, the more they eluded me.

When I first started working at the Mall of America, I worked on the west side, which had a hallway filled with individually owned carts. The retail beast is either so busy you can barely keep up with your customers, or it’s so boring there is nothing to do but chat with your fellow retailers.

During those lulls, they would tell me their dreams, and sometimes it seemed so clear to me what their dreams meant. Even though it felt I was saying the right things, it always surprised me when they would agree and thank me for helping them clear up the mystery.

I’m sure there are people who make a living interpreting the dreams of others. It worked out pretty well in the end for Joseph in the Bible, but I guess it wasn’t my calling. It’s probably just as well. I’m not sure “dream interpreter” would have helped my resume.

It probably would have put Mom and Dad over the edge if I had chosen that as a career path. Mom was more intuitive than she ever cared to admit and was never really comfortable when I shared my dreams with her. I’m sure she was at a loss more times than not as to what to make of her little daughter with the wild imagination.

Dad didn’t think he dreamt much at all. If he did, it was in black and white, and he truly never believed there was a connection to any behaviors or feelings attributed to a full moon. I’m glad God gave them an abundance of patience and understanding — I’m sure it helped raising a kid like me.