Day 75

In March, I had a vivid dream. It's clearer in my mind than most actual things that happened that month.

The dream started with me awake. I mean, in the dream, I was awake. I was sitting up in bed, and it was morning. I was stretching and yawning and hearing noises from the kitchen—running water, the coffee grinder. I got up.

In the kitchen, Barclay was standing over the stove, cracking eggs into the frying pan. Sully was sitting at the table, concentrating hard on a picture he was coloring. Scarlett was in the cupboard over the sink, folded right in half with her hands clutching her little feet. 

I said good morning to everyone and everyone said good morning to me. I walked into the living room.

The couch wasn't green. I stared at it. The couch was always green. How was the couch suddenly not green? It was blue now, which isn't a huge leap from green, it's not very far on the color wheel, but couches don't just go from green to blue overnight. But then, I thought, maybe they do? And suddenly I couldn't remember how couches worked. It felt like information I should know, information that had once been solidly filed away in my brain—like how I remember learning about cumulonimbus clouds in second grade. I know I have that knowledge, I know I've gotten and grasped it, but when I open the mental filing cabinet to pull out the little info card, it's gone.

Do cumulonimbus clouds produce rain? 

Are they flat or fluffy? 

Do couches change color overnight? Who knows?

That's when it struck me that Scarlett shouldn't be in the cupboard above the sink. Another piece of important information I'd forgotten somehow. She could fall! 

I spun around and ran to get her, but now she was sitting at the table with Sully. I'd been imagining it, probably. I looked at the couch; it was green. 

Huh.

Barclay noticed I had a funny look on my face and asked if I was okay. Because Dream Barclay is just as thoughtful and considerate as Real Barclay.

"No," I said. "I'm asleep."

He looked concerned. "No you're not," he said. "We're all awake."

"No," I said, rubbing my forehead with both of my hands. "I'm really, really asleep. Scarlett was in the cupboard and the couch was blue."

"No," he said again. He was getting frustrated. "The couch has always been green." I noticed he didn't comment on Scarlett being in the cupboard.

"Yeah, I know," I said. "That's why I know I'm sleeping. This. Is. A. Dream."

I went back to my room and got into my bed and closed my eyes and tried to wake up. And I couldn't. And I started to feel panicky, like someone had a pillow over my face. 

I went back into the kitchen and politely asked Barclay to crack an egg over my head. 

He said no. He wanted to know why. I was so angry.

"I just think it'll wake me up," I said. I was verging on hysterics. I was starting to raise my voice. "Just do it. Please. Now. Barclay."

And poor Dream Barclay, who is very full of common sense in all the worlds, even the ones in my head, saw that there was nothing for it but to crack an egg over his frantic wife's head.

I felt the shell break, and I felt the yolk run into my hair and down the back of my neck.

And then I woke up. I continued to feel the yolk dribbling into my ear for a few seconds as I left the dream. Then I went into the kitchen, where Barclay and Sullivan were (Scarlett wasn't awake yet) and checked the couch and the cupboard and I touched things like a crazy person to see if everything was solid and real.

A few days later, Saskatchewan declared a state of emergency. The schools closed. Businesses closed. Everyone was asked to stay home and everything was cancelled, from the writing workshop at the local library to Disneyland. The news was all Covid-19, all the time. 

It felt dangerous to go outside, but then you'd go outside and it looked like it always did. You'd go to the grocery store, and it was your same old grocery store with all the same people and all the same stuff, but the baking aisle was empty of flour and there were arrows on the floor. You'd go for a walk and you'd walk past all the usual places but the parks were all wrapped up in Caution tape and the houses had hearts in the windows. 

Everything was the same, but there were these important things that were different, that were substantial enough to make you feel like you were losing it. Or asleep. And there were people who didn't think it was that big of a deal, which made you feel even more crazy.

(I don't know why I'm talking in past tense, like any of this is over.)

Anyway. I've been thinking about that dream a lot lately, for some reason.