Lila Blue (29 page)

When I woke up I felt really
scared, like it meant something bad was going to happen to us. I wrote the
dream down in my journal and tried to figure out what it meant, but nothing
came to me besides the feeling of dread.

At breakfast I told Lila about the
dream.

Instead of having an instant
interpretation for me, she did what she always did with my dreams. She asked me
questions and focused very intently on everything I said.

I practically was back in the dream
while I described it to her, remembering more details or maybe my imagination
was supplying details in response to her questions, so the dream was becoming
more complex because we were working on it.

"What time of year was
it?" she asked.

"Autumn," I said.
"It was cold and some of the leaves were turning brown on the
bushes."

"What were you hunting
for?"

"I had to get some meat for us
to eat. My dog and I needed food."

"What kind of meat?"

"Deer, raccoon, rabbit,
birds."

"What time in history was
it?"

"It was modern times, or not
too long ago. The clothes and gun were current."

"Good," she said.
"When you got lost, what were you afraid of?"

"Not being able to find our
way home. Dying. Being lost and cold forever."

"What message does the dream
have for you today?" she asked.

"I don't know," I said.
"Don't go hunting? Remember how to find your way home?"

She looked at me and nodded, but
didn't offer any ideas.

"Maybe it's about your gun
essay, Grandma. I'm scared for you."

"There is a gun it your dream,
and in it you are a man with a gun, and we were talking about fearful people
needing guns to feel safer. It could be the way your Dream Mother put all those
images together. Does that feel right?"

"I don't know," I said.

"Well, pretend you do know.
Does it seem right?"

"No, I don't think that's the
message of the dream," I said, and when I heard how certain I sounded, I
knew what I said was true.

"Good," she said.
"You are the expert about your dreams, just as you are the only expert on
your life, your body, and your health. Listen to your inner voice. Get in the
habit of checking with
you
. You're the boss of you. Other people can
give you ideas, but only you can say if they ring true or not."

"So what does the dream
mean?" I asked. It seemed knowing her idea was wrong didn't get me any
closer to what was right. "Why can't the Dream Mother say things in plain
English? Why does she make us work for the message?"

"Sometimes she does say things
in plain English. Sometimes she commands, and you feel you've heard the voice
of God telling you to do or not do something. More often she likes the richness
of metaphor, I think. One picture can have many layers of meanings."

I sighed and drank the last of my
coffee, not satisfied to leave the dream alone but not wanting it to be so much
work.

"Okay," Lila said.
"Do you still want to work with the dream?"

"I guess."

"Try this. Be the man lost in
the woods. Talk with his voice. Dialog with him."

"I don't get it," I said.

"For example, if it were my
dream, I might say, 'Lost man, what are you afraid of?' and he might answer,
'I'm afraid my dog will starve and it will be my fault for not keeping her
safe. She trusts me.'"

"Wow," I said. "Your
dream guy would say all that?"

"Probably. My dream characters
like to talk. I ask them one little question and they go on and on. But yours
may be more succinct. Try it."

"Okay," I said.
"I'll be the dog." I thought by teasing her I might be able to give
up on the whole thing and pretend dreams meant nothing.

"Good choice," she said.

"I was kidding."

"I wasn't," she said.
"Be the dog. Ask the dog a question."

"Dog, what do you want?"
I asked, and I could actually see the dream dog looking at me and hear her
answer in my head. “The dog says, ‘I want to be with the man, even if we are
lost. I love him.’"

"Interesting," Lila said.

"What a stupid dog!" I
said, suddenly furious at that dog. "She doesn't even care if they both
starve to death out in the forest. She should be paying attention to where they
are. Dogs have good instincts. They can find their way home in the dark. But
no, she's so stupid she'd die for love."

Lila smiled at me. She didn't say
anything, but the look on her face said it all made perfect sense to her.

"It was only a dream," I
said. "Let's go to the beach."

"You're right," she said.
"Let's go."

We cleaned the kitchen and got on
jackets and went down barefoot to walk in the wet sand. Some microbe in the sea
was dying and leaving basketball-sized globs of foamy suds at the tide line.
The suds were white with a coating of greenish brown gunk on top from being
churned in the waves.

I ran along kicking at the base of
the piles of suds to cut them free and watch the wind blow them like
tumbleweeds across the beach. They left dirty streaks on the legs of my jeans,
but I didn't care. There was a stiff wind coming in from the ocean. The foam
critters scurried up the beach like herds of sheep when I cut them loose. Lila
laughed when one would leap up and over another or bump into another one and
merge with it.

I kept trying to erase the picture
of that stupid dog from my mind, but I couldn't. Then I heard my mother's voice
say, "dumb bitch," and I remembered a time when I was in third grade
and she'd broken up with a guy or maybe he'd dumped her, and she was calling
herself a dumb bitch, saying how stupid she was for falling in love with one
jerk after another. She was in her bedroom stripping off her clothes and
throwing them on the floor before stepping into the shower, and she was talking
to herself as if I weren't in the room. I was so scared I was frozen. I wanted
to tell her she was smart and pretty. I wanted to stop her from talking so mean
to herself, but I was invisible, as helpless as a shadow.

Maybe my dream was telling me how
scared I was for my mom going off in the wilderness with some man who might get
lost and couldn't even take care of himself, much less her.

After we turned back toward home
and I'd tired of kicking suds, I said to Lila, "I think the dream is
telling me I'm scared about Janice going off with a man."

"That sounds right," she
said.

"But why did I think the man
was me?" I asked.

"Did you ever feel you were
the strong one in your relationship with your mother?"

"Yea. Sometimes I feel I am
the parent and she is the child. So in the dream, I made myself the powerful
one, and got us both lost?" I shook my head. "It's too confusing,
Lila. Why does it have to be so complicated?"

She shrugged and smiled at me.
"It's only a dream," she said.

"Grandma," I said.
"You're awful!"

"I couldn't resist," she
said. Then she took off running toward her stairs. "Race you," she
called, and she had a good head start before I realized she was serious.

I ran as hard as I could and jumped
on the first step right in front of her.

"No fair," she said,
panting as much as I was. "You're fifty years younger than I am."

"No fair you!" I said.
"I didn't even know it was a race until you were halfway here."

"Okay," she said.
"It was a tie."

"I won!" I said.

"You're right,
Cassandra," she said, pushing me up the stairs in front of her.
"You're the winner."

After we changed clothes from our
walk, we went to Salem. It was fun to shop with Lila. She was patient with me
and let me look all around and choose what I wanted. I tried on about a hundred
things, and we ended up buying two pair of black jeans, five soft t-shirts in
pretty prints, and a long denim skirt that Lila called a petal skirt because it
was fitted at the waist and flared out like a flower on the bottom. It looked
great with the t-shirts and I knew it would be really pretty with the Mexican
blouses.

I found the perfect soft leather
flats that reminded me of ballet slippers. It was easy to choose a blue rain
parka with lots of big pockets, but it was harder to find a sweater for school.
After trying on more than a dozen, I finally found a beautiful heavy cotton
sweater in exactly the same shade of green as my eyes. It had a cozy hood, big
side pockets, and a sturdy zipper, and when I tried it on, it felt like a
friend.

When she'd paid for all that, Lila
took me to a different department to get new underclothes, so everything would
be new my first week of school. We were both pretending my first day of seventh
grade would be in Oregon.

The other thing I shopped for was
boys. Suddenly there were boys, and I really looked at them for the first time,
and each one I saw, I asked myself, "Would I like to practice kissing with
him?" Most were "no" and some were "maybe" and a few
were "yes."

When I was trying on shoes, there
was a very cute boy with his mom and younger brother, and while I was studying
his lips, he noticed me and we both looked away and looked back and turned red.
Then I didn't look at him until just before we left, and he was looking at me
and I smiled and looked away really fast. Noticing such a cute boy who also
noticed me made me so nervous and so happy I walked on my tiptoes until I
realized what I was doing and stopped.

We went to a fish place for lunch,
and the waiter looked about sixteen and he had very pretty lips and I got so
shy, I ordered
fish and ships
, and he grinned at me, and then I got so
flustered I couldn't say anything at all.

Lila rescued me by saying,
"I'll have fish and ships too, and bring us two root beers please."

"Coming right up," he
said, and he grinned at me again, and I wished I could crawl under the table
and stay there.

"Oh, Cassandra, what fun we've
had today," Lila said. "Thank you for letting me buy clothes for you.
It makes me happy to see you finding your own style. What a delightful person
you are!"

"Grandma, how come you're
always so nice? Aren't you ever grumpy?"

"Yes, sometimes I'm grumpy.
But I try not to bother anyone with it. I do my best to clean up my attitude
before I'm around others. It's taken many years of practice to be an
optimist."

The cute boy brought our drinks
right away, and even though I tried not to look at him, I couldn't help myself.
He smiled at me, and I smiled back and felt my face flush scarlet. I was
feverish and my heart pounded in my throat. How would I ever get from this
space to actually kissing? I might die of embarrassment before I ever touched a
boy's lips.

The meals came then, and he smiled
at me again, and I managed to smile at him again without fainting, and then he
disappeared into another part of the restaurant, so I was released from the spell
long enough for us to eat.

"Is there anything else you
want to look for?" Lila asked between bites of hot fish dipped in tartar
sauce. "School supplies or calligraphy pens?"

"I don't think so," I
said. "The pens Kim gave us work fine. I usually wait until school starts.
Each teacher wants different things."

"Good," she said.
"We'll head back over the mountains after lunch. I want to do some more
writing."

"Are you writing about guns?
Did your prayers tell you to?"

"My prayers kind of left it up
to me to decide. Sometimes when I pray about something, I get a very clear yes
or no, but other times the answer is less specific. This time it was, if you
want to, if others want you to, you can choose it, but remember you are
choosing the consequences too."

"Did they tell you what the
consequences would be so you could make a good choice?"

She laughed. "No, I guess they
left that part up to me to figure out. I think the worst that could happen is
some gun owners would be offended. The best that could happen is some kids'
lives would be saved. The boy who shot his brother is going to have to live
with that the rest of his life. And his parents may always wonder if there was
something they could have done to prevent it."

"When you put it that way, I
guess it is worth a try. 'The pen is mightier than the sword,' right?"

"We'll see," she said.
She smiled, but it was more a tired smile than a joyful, everything is
wonderful smile.

That night after dinner Lila let me
read the first draft of her essay.

About Guns:  My Point of View,
by Lila Blue

My Dear Friends and Neighbors, when
we consider owning anything, we weigh its potential costs, benefits and risks.
The lifetime costs of a dog for example can range from fairly inexpensive to
very expensive. Vet bills can be high, and food and grooming costs add up. Dogs
also need a daily commitment of time and attention to be healthy, happy pets.
The benefits of having a dog are considerable though, including devoted love,
hours of entertainment, and personal protection. The risks of owning a dog can
be high. Your dog might destroy property or hurt someone. It doesn't happen
often, but the risk is still there. Dog owners are willing to pay the price and
accept the risk, because the benefits far outweigh the cost and liability.

If we think of the potential
costs, benefits, and risks of owning a handgun, we run into similar
considerations. The cost is minimal in terms of money and time. You could buy a
used nine-millimeter automatic for three hundred fifty dollars. A lock box to
keep it in doesn't cost much. Cleaning a gun and keeping your aim sharp require
a small investment of time and energy.

At first glance it makes sense
for me to own a gun. I'm a single woman operating a public business. Anyone
could walk in and rob me if I didn't have protection. So the possible benefits
are great. I might be able to protect my home, my person, my money, my
business, and my life if I had a loaded gun in my hand and was willing to use
it when someone wanted to harm me.