veranda

These last 2 nights I've been having trouble staying asleep.  My throat has been killing me and I decided to take Nyquil last night.  I remember mostly me and Yuni waiting for an aerobics class to begin, but we weren't at the gym.  We were waiting for one of those music rooms that you have to sign up for.  Ya know, the kind with a piano and bench and you take your music and just play and everything is muted? A practice room.

We enter once the room is ready and there's a piano, but I have this anxious feeling like I'm waiting for a ride and I don't want to miss them.  I walk back towards the front of the building past the other practice rooms and wait in the lobby.  Only now it's a reception/lobby/bar of a small hotel, almost galley-like, very narrow.  I've been outside this hotel before, just walking past it, but in another dream maybe 1 or 2 months ago.  

I'm waiting in the seating area. It's got a great lounge feel to it with big plush velvety purple chairs and candles everywhere!  Then a Hispanic gentleman approaches me and I have this feeling that I used to date him a long time ago, but I don't know if it was anyone from my real life.  He's a minor distraction and he mentions something about soccer when I realize that the person I've been waiting for has already come and gone.  

I rush out the front of the hotel and into an apartment building but I take a wrong turn and the whole first story turns out to be someone's apartment.  I found this out the hard way, I opened a white 6 panel door with a bright light radiating from around it but instead I find an old lady sitting on the toilet! Eww.  She points me in the right direction and I end up walking out her front door only now I'm on a wooden front porch with some stairs leading down to the ground.  

I follow them down to the ground and when I look back towards the house again, it's actually an apartment building and all the balconies are adorned with bikes/flowers/laundry/wind chimes, tons of randomness.  I look back down the street and see a row of houses that are pier and beam and sit up from the ground.  I start running along the houses on the right hand side and am frantically looking for one house in particular, but I don't know which one. 

There's a blue house that I run past with a woman standing on the front porch.  She calls to me, "Over here! You past it!" as she's waving me down.  It's your mom.  I run up to meet her, give her a hug, and we sit on the steps of the porch just talking.  She's talking and I am intrigued, but I don't know what she's saying.  She's also smoking a small joint and she offers but I decline.  She gets up to water some plants on her porch and she walks back and forth still talking.  I feel at peace.  She sits back down, still talking, and at that point her right hand reaches for my face.  Her thumb is positioned to sit on my chin while her index finger and other fingers are slightly curled under my chin/jaw.  She looks me in the eyes and with kindness and empathy in her eyes she says, "I know."

And then I wake up with a pain in my throat.

Maybe it was the combination of alcohol and hypnotic meds in the Nyquil, I don't know.  Why would I dream about talking to your mom? All views of this dream had a patina hue to it except when I was talking with your mom.  That scene had a light bluish tint.  Kinda like a freshness.  I don't know if that even makes sense, but that's the easiest way I can describe it.

Weird, huh?

babbo

Seeing my uncle in a fragile condition has got me thinking more and more about my Pops.  He's no "spring chicken" - as he would say- and now that I'm older I'm starting to worry.  I recently started listening to classic country again, thanks due to my Tio Nene, and it's very comforting.  I downloaded a couple of tracks from VH1 Storytellers: Johnny Cash & Willie Nelson and the pair reminds me so much of my Pops and Tio Nene.  This all started becos I promised to make some CDs for my uncle.  I'm hoping it will help him recuperate much faster.

Tio is definitely Johnny Cash.  Tall, dark figure, moody, charismatic when he wants to be, but a serious stern look on his face when he's not smiling.  Pops on the other hand is all Willie Nelson.  Laid back, happy, a true cowboy and serious when he wants to be, very personable minus being a pothead.  Besides these characteristics, it got me thinking about growing up country and how my dad absolutely loved "On the Road Again."  

I wonder if settling down was tough for him.  He seems like the kind of man that could keep on driving forever.  He loves the drive, the sights, the people, but most of all, I think he loves singing to music.  So when I was in the 5th grade, my sister had married and moved to Killeen a year prior becos her husband was in the military.  I was 10 years old and had no earthly idea where or what Killeen was.  All I knew was that my sister was there and we were gonna go visit.  I was pretty excited to see her after so long and was even more surprised when my Pops handed me a map of Texas and told me to map a route from Sabinal to Killeen and avoid the interstates.  Who does that?  I was totally stoked and grabbed a pencil and started making a route through towns in the Hill Country that I was already familiar with.  Was I that smart or did my Pops have that much faith in my map routing abilities?  Just think, a 10 yr old planning a driving trip, that's crazy!

I remember that first trip.  We spent somewhere between 4-5 hours on that trip.  Only recently did I realize that trip should have only taken 3 hours! The roads were alive with wildflowers and Texas rain.  We traveled through Hondo, Bandera, Pipe Creek to 281.  Then headed north through Johnson City, Marble Falls, Lampasas, then East through Copperas Cove and finally Killeen.  And we stopped EVERYWHERE! I remember getting some good chicken tenders and potato wedges at this chicken place that had a chicken mascot wearing a cowboy hat.  Or seeing the sky turn different shades of pink/orange/gray with the dusk.  It took a long time, but we spent the whole time listening to country music and singing at the top of our lungs.  Looking back I wonder if Mum was at all annoyed by us.  Have you ever seen Heartbreak Kid with Ben Stiller? That beginning part where they're traveling to Mexico and his bride has been singing the whole way? That's what we did.  I wonder why Mum never said anything?

These are the songs that really stick out in my mind.  The lyrics have no relevance to my life or that particular time frame, but the music takes me back to those trips.  It was always cool, weather-wise, I remember that. When I hear these songs I feel like I'm sitting in between my folks in that 1980's red Ford pickup just singing away with my Pops.  But most of all I remember being at peace, happiness and feeling safe. I had it made back then. 

George Strait - So Much Like My Dad

Mark Chesnutt - I'll Think of Something

-_-