Dream Party

This is a recent dream. Barbara is my wife, Michael Ann is her sister and Cait is Michael Ann’s significant other.

It was too hot for my jacket so I carried it in the crook of my arm with my duffel bag’s strap over my other shoulder. The address on the white picket gate was the same as on my note paper so I pushed through. Passing between two flowering bushes I was greeted with the sight of a long irregular open grass field, lined with trees, much like a golf course, that stretched up the long steep hill to a little stone house. I trudged along, head down to lean against the slope, and wished that my bag were lighter and the distance shorter. I looked up, expecting to be halfway there, and found I was somehow already at the top.

The tiny thatched roof stone cottage was clinging to the edge of the precipice, as if for its life, and in the distance beyond, laid the whole of the shining city. Suddenly Cait burst out of the open door to pull me from the vista. Dressed in tan slacks with an electric blue blouse she wore brown Birkenstocks and her signature Argyle socks. She lashed me with her happy smile and said, “Glad you could make it kid…you’re just in time.”

I asked, “Just in time for what?”

“The party,” she cried, sweeping past me. “What else is there?”

Cait threw her hands up and cried out, “Come on in…you’re all welcomed here!” Beyond her, down the long green slope, hundreds of men women and children – lots of children – were streaming through the poor little gate.

Drawn to the open door, by the aroma of cooking, I looked into the darkness and found Barbara and Michael Ann with their backs to me at the stoves. Yes, stoves; two old time black commercial wood burning stoves. They were side by side along the opposite wall with more pots and pans than in the store, hanging above on pegs and hooks. One huge table, surrounded by mismatched chairs, so dominated the small room it was necessary to side step around the edge to reach the other side. Dressed in floor length dresses with full bib aprons, their backs were to me as they stirred skillets and pans with both hands.

Cait touched my shoulder and said, “Stand aside kid yer blockin’ progress.”

I just managed to jump back out of the way as more than two dozen laughing people, a third of them kids, wedged through the little door and scrambled around the big table to take seats. Michael Ann whirled around from her stove and plopping a huge round platter of sizzling beef and pork ribs on the table, cried out, “Okay everybody…dig in!”

Barbara called out, “Look out…hot stuff!”, and placed an oblong plate with two huge baked Salmons on the table.

Michael Ann looked up at me, peeking in the door, and said, “We were wondering if you were gonna make.”

“Yes,” little brother,” Barbara added, “you just made it.”

Little brother? I asked myself as they turned back to their stoves. I dropped my bag and jacket next to the open door and when I straightened up I saw my reflection in the beveled glass. The familiar boy gazing back at me was no more than twelve, maybe thirteen. Strange, very strange, I distinctly remember turning sixty some time ago.

“Hey kid, you gonna help me or not?”

Cait was standing there with a big crystal ice bucket cradled in her arms.

“Help you?”

“Yes…with the Arnold Palmers - come on!”

Cait turned away and began scooping ice cubes into the empty glasses of the people seated on the grass. There were hundreds of them, many hundreds, sitting and kneeling on the grassy slope all the way down to the gate where even more were pouring through. Waving their empty glass in the air and all laughing and calling out in good cheer, like the huge flocks of birds you see in wildlife films, honking and fluttering on a river bank.

I turned back to the cottage and another door, a Dutch door, appeared out of nowhere next to the other. The top portion was slung open and on the shelf, atop the bottom half were two glass pitchers, one filled with lemonade and the other ice tea.

I heard Cait cry out; “Come on kid!”, and taking a pitcher in each hand I went down the line pouring glasses half with tea and then topping them off with lemonade. I glanced at Cait, way ahead of me, and was surprised to see her ice bucket was still full. And stranger still, no matter how much I poured, my pitchers never emptied. A drop of sweat stung my eye and I wished it weren’t so hot. Suddenly a cool breeze swept down the hill and some of the close by folks said, “Thanks that’s nice”, and I didn’t know if they were giving me credit for the breeze or just for the drinks.

There was a clatter from up the hill and Barbara, standing to the side of the doorway, where the people from inside were streaming out, was banging on an empty pot with a ladle, and calling out, “Okay…time to move up.” Everyone stood and surged up the slope as another couple of dozen disappeared into the little house. Then those remaining sat down and went back to having a good time.

My head was filled with questions and then Cait, suddenly at my side, said, “If we try to cram anymore inside, the house will slip over the edge and fall into the city.”

“Oh, I see,” I said, as if that made any sense.