My Transitional Dream

In my dream, I was overseeing four new kindergarten teachers who had their classes in a square pod, so I could watch them all at once. I was instructing them to take attendance. There was a non-verbal special needs boy sitting beside his educational assistant making some noises. Then one of the young female teachers was telling a set of parents that she had given her child a forty-five-minute detention the previous day for kissing a girl. That was when I realized that I didn’t belong there anymore.

Suddenly, I was back up at my university. The Education department had a new arts centre where an African dance workshop was taking place. I tried to join in, but I didn’t know any of the movements, so I left the room. The whole layout of the building had changed, and I realized that I didn’t belong there anymore.

Then I was at my mother’s house and all the wooden floors were slanted and the garden was completely overgrown. The man next door, who had always talked about gardening with my mum, looked over the fence and remarked on how everything looked so disheveled. My dead mother was in the kitchen and she gave me a bunch of long dried pampas grass and it prickled my hands. That’s when I realized that I didn’t belong there anymore.

Now I am retired from teaching and have moved away from that house where my husband and I cared for my mum for her last ten years. These transitional dreams are less frequent now, as I gradually feel more closure. Losing three parents and a sibling, both of us retiring and moving all in the space of two years was a lot. With my cat on my lap, I can write about it now with some clarity and peace. Life moves relentlessly, ever forward.