Dream weaver

I am not much of a dreamer.

That’s not to say I don’t have hopes and dreams like any normal person. I just mean I don’t tend to dream much during my sleeping. Or, more accurately, I haven’t typically remembered my dreams when I wake up.

That has inexplicably changed in recent weeks. I don’t know why suddenly at age 53 I am having vivid dreams that I clearly recall upon waking after years of not doing so.

I am taking no new medication.

I go to bed by 10:30 p.m. and rise by 5:30 a.m. as I have for the past year or more.

I haven’t been eating exotic foods just before bed.

I have not experienced a trauma.

I sleep on the same pillow that I’ve had for a few years. (I am obligated to mention this because one of my dad’s favorite jokes he likes to tell the boys goes like this: “I had a dream last night I ate a giant marshmallow. I woke up and my pillow was gone.”)

There’s nothing new or different in my bedroom.

When I tell people about New South Essays, which can be annoyingly frequent, I like to say it’s therapeutic. Well, today, I’m going to treat you like my therapist to see if I can get to the bottom of this.

I don’t mind dreaming and remembering my dreams, but some have been straight up nightmares waking me up out of a dead sleep. After a few dreams, I started recording the basic scenarios during my morning journaling. Here are a few:

• Carla and I are driving in some unfamiliar city, and a tornado comes out of nowhere and begins tossing our vehicle around the road along with other cars and debris. That one woke me up.
• I woke myself up one night when I was trying to call out “Carlton,” the name of our youngest son, while dreaming that he was running away from home by escaping with shadowy figures through the garage door and down the driveway.
• I was at the store buying groceries when an active shooter opened fire. I scrambled for cover but woke up when I was shot.
• I was in a lab testing the strength of Winston’s (our miniature poodle) dog crate. The machine used a long, yellow rod that extended across the inside of the crate stretching it while we gradually applied more tension with a dial. The crate bent but never broke.
• I was picking up Carlton and his friend Cierra after a drama rehearsal. When Cierra got in the car we started discussing her new hairstyle. We drove away and only after a few minutes of conversation did I realize I had left Carlton. I immediately went back for him but woke up before he got in the car.

I think you get the point.

I don’t give much credence to dreams as sources of revelation. My friend Rick Bennett once said it is just the subconscious “clearing the cache” like your internet browser. That feels true to me.

When I tell Carla these dreams she says I have the least mysterious dreams of anyone. The meanings are transparently obvious. I see her point. A tornado and mass shooting are pretty thinly veiled stand-ins for stress, and Carlton’s recurring roles clearly reveal I worry about him. It’s particularly easy to pick out themes when I write them all down.

I don’t need these nocturnal visions to discover I am stressed and that I worry about Carlton. What I don’t know and would like to get a handle on is why am I suddenly dreaming and recalling them.

I have been an early riser for years. Carla says I have been sleep deprived for 30 years. I have moved my waking time from 4:30 to 5:30 over the years in response to her insight and a few scary moments during my commute.

My hypothesis is closer to Rick’s observation and is related to my advancing age. My younger mind could take all of the day’s inputs in and process them. My older brain can’t keep up, so at night, it spins out these weird dreams to put to bed any leftover anxieties from the day. The dreams are harmless in that I don’t feel them intruding on my reality. They are disturbing because in the moment they feel dire and real and wake me up.

Released in 1975 and re-popularized in 1992’s “Wayne’s World,” Gary Wright’s song “Dream Weaver” does, oddly, offer some comfort in all of the unsettledness of my mind:

I’ve just closed my eyes again

Climbed aboard the dream weaver train

Driver take away my worries of today

And leave tomorrow behind

For now, I’m just going to chalk it up to clearing the cache and not get too deep. If it keeps up, I may schedule another session with you.

Sweet dreams!