Wedding dream

I’m sitting on my very pleasant porch, enjoying the welcome combination of cool air and sunshine, watching the manic squirrels chase each other up the trees, and wondering why we dream what we dream. My dreams are usually collections—bits and pieces—of things that happen to me during the day, plus a little fear and frustration thrown in. Sometimes a dream solves a problem for me or gives me an idea, but more often I have a recurring dream that I’m trying to go somewhere but I can’t get there. I had this dream frequently when I was teaching, since I was tired and stressed most of the time and was always afraid I would oversleep my alarm and be late for school. (This never happened.)


I had a version of this dream the other night about the wedding I’m planning for my youngest daughter, Libby, next September. It will be at my sister’s ranch in southern Colorado. Wedding plans are well under way, but there’s not much for me to do right now here in Missouri. I’ve been hard at work on my lone star quilt, and I’ve been calling it Ranch Wedding because the lone star always reminds me of Texas, which reminds me of cows, cowboys, and ranches. Plus, the colors are joyful like I know Libby’s wedding will be, the flowered fabric is pretty, and the brown and red paisley fabric in the center of the star and in the border looks kind of ranch-y.

So, one evening after a day of sewing I asked my husband, “What time IS it, anyway?” One clock said 9:00 and the other said 10:00. Don’t ask me how that happened. That night I had this dream: Everyone in the entire family, including my married daughters, their husbands, and my granddaughter, was milling around my house (not the ranch), talking. Suddenly I said, “What time is it?” It was 6:00 and the wedding was at 7:00! “We have to be there in 10 minutes, and we still have to eat and get dressed,” I said. General panic. I sprang into action and said I would get Danica dressed and everyone else should help Libby. Then I woke up.

Strangely, Libby had a wedding dream that night, too. She dreamed that we had forgotten to set the time of the ceremony, and everyone was at my house (not the ranch), wondering what to do. Crazy.

I suppose my hours working on the Ranch Wedding quilt have focused my subconscious mind on the real ranch wedding. It will be wonderful and we won’t have any crazy last-minute panic, I know. But I bet I keep dreaming about it for the next 11 months.