Dream a Little Dream

Far beyond the hustle and bustle of a heavily populated metropolitan city, extending farther than the deep, rustling woods, and over vast hills of the deepest green, there was a small, humble patch of land. This particular patch of land was nestled between an unimpressive, wooden out-house and a large pear tree.

One day, a young couple happened upon this modest land, hopeful and eager to start their new lives as newlyweds. But whereas the young woman’s eyes glazed over with elation, as if she had just encountered the rarest of hidden treasures, her husband was less than a little passionate. You see, the woman didn’t see the seemingly unremarkable landscape before her; she saw beyond it. She envisioned before her a large, white farmhouse with a wraparound porch. She saw a garden in the backyard where she would plant cabbages, peppers, parsley and whatever else she had such inclinations to do because it would be hers. She could see children racing each other in the grass and playing on the swing her husband would fashion onto the pear tree.

Her husband was far less enthralled with the landscape. Unlike his wife, who didn’t see the land for what it was, but for what it could be, all he saw was a bare patch of land, a crumbling outhouse, and a pear tree that seemed to act as the space’s guardian.

But when the woman turned to her husband and he saw the hopeful glint in her eyes and the way the light, which swirled in a kaleidoscope of oranges, reds, and yellows as it began to descend below the horizon, glinted off her vibrant auburn hair, he knew that he would never be able to deny her anything. He would fight the moon for all the stars in the sky if he thought it would bring her happiness.

And so, the land was theirs. The man built his wife her dream home, working tirelessly from sunrise to sunset, making sure to appease her every desire. He built a great wraparound porch, incorporated large bay windows, and surrounded the home with a white picket fence. Meanwhile the woman began the tedious work of planting a magnificent garden and added the special touches that were not only needed to complete the home, but to make it truly theirs.

By night, the two of them would lie beneath the pear tree, gazing at the stars. The man would take hold of her finger, point it towards the sky as far as it would extend, and trace the constellations. They talked of their dreams, their plans, how many children they would have, and what their names would be. They talked of animals and activities and games they would play and trips they would take. And finally, on the last night of their laborious efforts to make that seemingly banal patch of land a truly charming home, they carved the outline of their hands into the pear tree and marked it with their initials. Then together, they walked towards their new house with the promise of all of their hopes and dreams awaiting them on the doorstep, welcoming them home.

The first few months were the most joyous and blissful of the couple’s lives. The happiness they felt was so all consuming, they would have both sworn that it would last forever. On those perfect summer days, the sun shone high and bright in the sky, casting their small section of land in an almost ethereal warmth that seemed to be just for them. It was their own slice of heaven in their own corner of the earth that could never be penetrated by a gray sky or a rainy day.

And it never was.

Well…until it was.

The young couple’s days spent together were almost everything they had dreamed they would be. But their perfect lives together had always included children. And yet, month after month, that particular dream seemed to retreat into the wind. Their failure to conceive devastated the woman, and her husband ached seeing her in such a state of melancholia. He did everything he could in those weeks to brighten her spirits. He brought her breakfast in bed, he took her on picnics, he helped her plant poppies and sunflowers in her blooming garden, and they went on walks through the corn fields surrounding their house. These activities seemed to be a balm to her spirits on some days, but on others, she followed him wordlessly, her disposition somber and her light dim.

One day, the woman woke up violently ill. Her face was sallow and sunken and her skin was a sickening pallor. The man burst into the bathroom, his face riddled with concern at seeing his wife hunched over the toilet tightly clutching her stomach. He wasted not a moment ringing for a doctor who, at the man’s urging, was at the farmhouse within the hour.

The doctor confirmed news that the couple had waited what felt like a lifetime to hear: she was expecting a child.

With that news, it seemed as if the sun finally dared to emerge from behind the clouds. The joy the couple felt in that moment was so poignant, it charged through the room like a lightning bolt. But the doctor’s continued presence in the room and his grim expression brought the husband and wife back down to earth, and that is where they remained.

The doctor informed the couple that it would be a very difficult pregnancy indeed, and although it was too soon to say definitively, he was not confident in the outcome…for the woman or the child.

This news greatly disturbed the husband, but the wife remained optimistic. With this child, the woman’s faith had been renewed. She found joy in nature once more, in going on walks with her husband and absorbing the morning sun and lying down in the grass with her face tilted towards the sky, creating shapes from clouds. But despite her high spirits, her health remained in decline.

The morning she gave birth was a tumultuous one indeed. She awoke with an almost violent force from a sudden staggering pain in her stomach. Panicked, her husband rang for the doctor. When he arrived, he quickly ushered the husband into the hall so that he could begin his work. The husband fought each step of the way, refusing to leave his wife, but at the doctor’s insistence, he finally conceded.

The man paced the halls in a manic fashion, nervously swiping his hands through his hair. He tried to root himself to the floor, but the effort it took to remain still was its own battle. So he resumed his uneasy trek up and down the halls until finally…the doctor opened the door.

The babe was swaddled in the doctor’s arms. A boy, the doctor told him. The news lit the man up with joy, but at the doctor’s gray expression, his internal light was extinguished almost as quickly as it had arisen.

He never went inside to see his wife’s body. He cursed himself as a coward for not doing so in the weeks that followed, but deep inside, he knew he’d made the right decision. He couldn’t bear it. His wife, who was the brightest star on the darkest night, a light so absolute and true in the longest of tunnels, his love, his life, was gone. And he couldn’t bear to punctuate that truth by looking upon her lifeless body.

Parenting his young son in the years that followed his wife’s death was never the smoothest of tasks. He did the best he could, one would suppose, but he’d never pictured being a father without…her. And though he loved his son with every beat of his heart, their relationship never seemed to quite fit without his mother. And as the young boy grew older, though he never knew his mother, he too could sense that a piece was missing.

One day, the young man spotted his father lying in the grass under the pear tree. This particular day, though it seemed inauspicious, something inexplicable seemed to glimmer in the air. And somehow, at the same time, though neither the father nor son knew anything in their lives was about to change, somehow simultaneously, they did.

The father sat up as the son approached, a questioning gleam in his eye. With little preamble, the son, as he’d never had the courage to do before, asked his father to tell him about his mother. And with no argument, his father obliged.

The father told his son of his mother’s beauty, her warmth, her hopes, and her dreams. How she saw in this prosaic land what no one else ever had before: a family, a home, him. He told his son how he despaired, not just for her death, but for her unrequited desire to hone this land into something bigger, better, brighter.

In his father’s story, somehow, the son knew that he must leave. He couldn’t understand why, what in his father’s story, what in his mother’s dreams, had prompted such a feeling, but it was a feeling that was beyond him—an invisible rope, steering him towards a path he knew he had to follow. His father laid a hand on his shoulder, seeming to understand, though nothing had yet been said.

Years later, the man died, lying in the spot under the pear tree where he and his wife had so many times in the years that preceeded; where they spoke dreams into the sky, hoping it would hold onto them and keep them safe until they could come to fruition.

The son returned with his wife and two daughters shortly following his father’s passing. In some way that could be neither explained nor made sense of, he always knew he would. He always knew it was inevitable. Together, he and his wife brought to life what was started so many years ago by his parents. His wife tended to his mother’s garden, his daughters chased each other relentlessly through the fields, their laughter echoing through the summer wind, and the man fashioned a large, old tire, into a swing on the branch of the pear tree for his daughters, as his mother had once intended for him.

That was many years ago now that my father returned to this inconspicuous utopia with me, my mother, and my sister. As I stand here now, every inch of this place swells with so much life, and love, and joy, that it makes me wonder how my grandfather did not immediately sense the magic of this land like his wife, my grandmother, did. Looking out at the house my grandparents built together, and the garden my grandmother cared for and tended to, at their initials carved into the pear tree where the swing my father built for my sister and I rocks slowly in the wind, my heart skips a beat. Seeped within this land is pain, grief, and dreams that were dreamed but were not witnessed. And yet, with that pain there is also light that is luminous and bright, happiness, raw and unadulterated, and love, so palpable and alive that I feel like I can breathe it in like air.

And it is in this moment that I feel what I know in my heart my grandmother must have felt upon arriving on this land: I am tethered to it by some intangible but impervious bond.

There is a saying that you can never go home again. But something about this land, something about a dream so carefully crafted by a young woman two generations before me, makes it so you simply cannot stay away. I know that when I am no longer for this world, nor are my children, or their children after that, that this land will remain. It will always brim with life and foster new dreams, forever guarded by a faithful pear tree.