With a small screwdriver in my inside coat pocket, I was at Mr. Wyatt's shop the next morning when it opened at a few minutes after ten.
My night's dream adventures had been mixed. One was of a summer day in the neighborhood school playground, near where we'd lived in Anderson Township, Ohio, an eastern Cincinnati suburb, when our two boys were eight and four. Their mother and I were pushing them in swings, she Amos and I Adam, and we were all singing "Bingo the Dog." Joy and goodness radiated from that memory, that yearning, that perfection, that irreplaceable loss. Grace is love fulfilled through acceptance of one's own regrets and responsibility.
There followed another dream episode in which I was driving my old '54 Chevy home from town late at night in some long, long ago. In my mind, as I drove old 110's curves, I was seeing Helen's smiling face. She had given me a warm hug and said, "Take care." Then I became aware of the occasion of that returned remembrance-our 1966 high school graduation.
There, we said goodbye. She had gone on to her life and I to mine. I danced with her at a high school reunion some fifteen years later, my heart soaring and hurting at the same time.
She and I had kept in touch off and on over the years since our class walked across the stage for that validation of our possible potential, a high school diploma.
I have been blessed by the lust, and sometimes the love, of several good women in my life. Despite those precious gifts, there is an empty place in my heart that will forever honor my first love. Unrequited love is carried forever: a wonderful hunger, an imagined taste, never duplicated and yet always remembered.
In another scene within my sleep world, I saw a long, tall, lean man with a full head of silver-gray hair and a great, long, drooping moustache of the same color. He wore suspenders and a white shirt, with no tie. He was a bit stooped and looked very old. His countenance was somber but not hard. There was an aura of wisdom about him.
Beside him was a dumpling of a woman, noticeably younger than he, who hardly came to his shoulder. She wore a blue, checked apron and a white, red-trimmed garden bonnet. Her smile radiated warmth and sweetness. Beside her stood a stout, tall, ruddy-faced man of about forty. He was dressed in a sharp, dark gray, three-piece suit and held a 1930s light gray hat in his right hand. He had a crooked smile, his chin was pulled a little down, and his eyes were a direct green that connected with mine. He looked like my daddy and me.