4AM

I don't know about you, but I will have a dreams that will abruptly rouse me. They're not nightmares like a kid will awake screaming to. These particular dreams I have I call “truth dreams.” It's the substance of the dream that I find surprising yet familiar as well. Surprising due to my being half- aware of the “truth” and familiar due to the same reason. I guess my unconscious will dig through the back closets of my brain and bring forth things I’ve forgotten about. It's 4 AM now and I have been awakened by one.

Without giving you an entire history of my mother, here she is in a nutshell, or rather here is what I surmised her to be till one day she invalidated a good part of that summation. On the surface, my Mom would leave most people, and me at the time, underwhelmed. I had thought I had known everything that was possible to know about her and her chances of expanding any horizon on her life, personality or what-have-you was at its end. What you see it what you get and there ain't anymore.

In the dream, I was going downstairs into the cellar to find my Mom carving rock into little statues. I stood there, in quizzical surprise, when I said, “I didn't know you could do that!”

She responded that she never did it before, it was just a new hobby that she figured she'd try out. And it was apparent she had some decent talent at it too.

Then I awoke.

Years ago, as my brother and I were leaving the house, we passed our Mom who was at her kitchen table, smoking cigs and drinking her Lipton tea as she always did. She had that constant disinterested look on her face. She unexpectedly stirred, opened her mouth and opined on the essence of her two grown sons.

“Ken, you're the social butterfly. You are constantly bouncing from group to group, talking, meeting ...and Ronnie, you just do whatever the hell you want.”

I stood there wondering to myself, “Where in the hell did that come from?” It wasn't till a little later on that I realized she was right about us. This women who I sort of gave up on long ago wasn't quite finished yet and did possess some hidden expertise.

And now I dream the same story in the dream world of symbolism to remind me.