College

I have recurring dreams, in many different forms, of returning to college. Here is one.

I am in my car—a plain model from the 1980s, battered, black, with bluntly rounded contours—filled with all my belongings and parked in the driveway of a modest home in a decaying middle-class neighborhood. Now in my late fifties, I have come to this large city from far away to enroll in college—although I graduated decades earlier. School starts tomorrow, and I urgently need a place to live. I understand that the woman who owns the house, with the help of her daughter, boards many young students. Strangely, living with many other students here is oddly appealing to me. The daughter (slight, attractive, plainly dressed, very busy, and not a student herself) gets along easily with everyone. Too busy assisting others to worry about details, she knows that many issues will have to be resolved among these students but that such things have a way of arising and resolving naturally without her intervention. I have an immediate and deep affection for her. The furniture in the house's crowded rooms are cherished pieces from the mother’s and grandmother’s generations, littered with carefully placed knickknacks and white coverings. I move to a small room provided with a bed, chest of draws, chair, and other necessities all meticulously prepared as if for a family guest, which is to be my room. Suddenly I realize that against all odds my search for a college apartment in this strange city has accidentally taken me to my childhood home. With room additions and unfamiliar furnishings it had seemed tiny and quaint to me at first, but now I recognize the basic layout of home hidden within the remodeling. Elated by this discovery, I hurry down the long hall from my room, thinking I should tell the others. By second nature I skip a step precisely before turning into the living room, deep, unconscious memory guiding my feet!

Our residents badly need groceries, and I accompany the daughter’s ten-year-old brother to a neighborhood store in my old automobile. I feel fortunate to have this occasion to help his sister. The store is hardly more than a shed sitting on bare dirt with a makeshift awning and tiny wood-plank porch. It is next to a steep dirt cliff with barren ground fifty feet below, an old wooden railing protecting customers from the fall. The daughter’s brother tells me something he knows about the cats reclining around the store’s entrance. I look over the railing and see cats running below. Suddenly I must stop. I am overcome with emotion—immense feelings of gratitude and regret. I believe I have happened upon a uniquely secure place for me. I am certain that this is how I should have lived when I went to college in my twenties. I realize I have made many grave mistakes but am now extraordinarily fortunate.

I welcome your comments—and your dreams!