I met my brother in the woods, he had parked his huge SUV off the side of the road. He had run over all kinds of shrubs and small trees.
“Little brother,” he said, “I’ve been waiting for you for years. Have you finally decided to reconsider your feelings about me?” I was walking with my dogs, Lenore, Izzy, Red, Rose, and they formed a circle around me, it felt like an iron ring.

“No,” I said, and I knew it was not for the first time, “we have never had a relationship. That was a lie. I have always been afraid of you.”

I knew I was in a dream, a fevered dream. My mother and father were up in the trees, looking down, crying, reaching out to me. We did our best, they said, you know we loved you.

I was sick, I was drinking too much cough medicine.

I know, I know, I said, the dogs and I kept walking, we didn’t stop or slow. I remembered coughing so hard and for so long that I got frightened – not in the dream, I don’t think –  and I took most of the bottle of medicine next to my bed. Too much, I think, I didn’t want to turn the light on and read the label.

I just wanted the coughing to stop.

My coughing had stopped for a while, and I could breathe again, but the dream came back and went on and deepened. My head was spinning.  It felt as if I were stuck in this dream for days, a lifetime, I just kept walking and walking but I never got anywhere, my family was up in the trees, watching me.

I thought of Sufi, and wanted to shout: “I have nothing to say, For God has taken His sharp knife and completely Hollowed me.” I thought of St. Augustine: “Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you  believe.”

I saw Thomas Merton sitting on a fallen tree, eating an apple, taking notes, waving to me: “Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.” All these things I have read were dancing in my head, they are on my walls,  I had a fever now, I was sweating.

I ran into a beautiful man with a backpack and a walking stick, I could have loved him, he seemed so gentle and earnest. He had a beautiful young woman with him.

I hope you won’t sue an old man for this, I begged them, they were both so young and full of promise. I am stealing your love as if it were my own,  but I’m too old to be a threat to you, and I wouldn’t harm you.I just don’t deserve love of my own, I am not enough of a man.

My father shouted down from the trees. “You do need to be a man. You need to play basketball. Build up your muscles. Sports is the way for you, the path to a successful life. The way to make friends, to be respected You need to live up to your potential. Real men play sports, they do not wet their beds..”

I saw my sister up in the woods, far off the path. We waved to one another, but we kept moving away until finally, she was out of sight and sound. She seemed to be crying out to me for help, but I could not hear her.  This caused my heart to break, I felt a great panic,  as if she were on a boat, pulling away in an awful storm.  I would never see her again. I couldn’t help her.

I had the sense of riding alone in a raft in a shallow stream, I just kept going forward, the dogs kept running. We started going faster and faster. But we were still in the woods.

I shouted up to my father that we needed to say goodbye to one another, the truth is, I said, we all did the best we could. Isn’t that the story of the world? “I’m sorry,” I said to them all, “there is nothing for me here. The real world is not the movies, thank God. I can run away. Let’s say we all loved each other, let’s leave it there.”

And it still wasn’t enough to get away. My destiny, I said out loud, is to turn into color and light itself and sail over the world in a burst of hues and sparks and cherubs.

My family called down to me to stay, stay. “What have I done to deserve this, cried, my mother. Who loved you more than me? We are family, they said, the only family you will ever have. I am your mother. What is more precious than that?”

I kept walking but I didn’t seem to get farther and farther from the trees, the dogs kept moving, showing me the path, Rose kept signaling to me to move, to keep going. She was impatient with me, as she often was.

Rose always knew where she was going, I never did. The woods started to fall behind me. She was bristling with purpose. I have to go now, I said to the young hikers. I worried about them, all by themselves.  They said they were just going to hike across the country together. Did I wish to come?

Oh, no, thanks. I’ too old now to hike across the country. But I have a place to go to. And thank you.

Please don’t sue this old man, I said again,  I am just trying to find my way. “I think I can instruct you to on how you can become who you really are. They turned to one another, surprised, but I kept moving past them, waving goodbye.

The young man gave me a hug. “Why would we sue you?,” he asked. “You are a good old man.” I wanted to cry. What had he seen?

Up ahead, I saw an old red barn. The dogs were all heading towards it as if they smelled food there, or could be warm.  I felt like I was being pulled by huskies in a sled.

There was a light inside, and light from a wood stove, a figure moving in the window. I had never met her but I knew her. It was strange and wonderful, a dream all of its own. It was where the rest of my life was waiting for me.

Everyone knew it but me. I woke up.

—

That was my dream in a  fever. You never really know how long a dream is, do you? It seemed to go on forever.  I awakened around 4 a.m., got up and went downstairs to write down my dream.  I was trembling, shivering, sweating coughing. I wanted to remember it. I knew I would forget it in just a few minutes.