For weeks I've been reading "Team of Rivals," Doris Kearns Goodwin's absorbing, Pulitzer Prize-winning narrative of Abraham Lincoln's Civil War presidency.
I'm going slow with this 750-page tome, savoring history as Goodwin sheds light on the most interesting man other than Jesus to ever walk the earth.
The other night, fending off sleep for a few more pages, I got a bonus when I reached the chapter "My Boy Is Gone."
In it, Lincoln's son Willie has died of typhoid fever, and Lincoln longs for Willie's presence, not through mediums as his wife, Mary, does, but through his active dream life.
One day, Lincoln turns to a nearby Army officer and says: "Did you ever dream of some lost friend and feel that you were having a sweet communion with him, and yet have a consciousness that it was not a reality. That is the way I dream of my lost boy Willie."
"Exactly," I mumbled, careful not to awaken anyone, especially our dogs, Bella and Sophie, snoozing in a bedroom chair.
Leave it to Lincoln to explain something I've experienced as long as I can remember.
Go ahead, roll your eyes and ask what I had for supper. That's what my friends do when I mention, "Hey, I had this dream last night."
Most people claim they don't dream (false) or quickly forget them (true), but I wake up, replaying these movies of the mind so I don't forget.
Some dreams are inexplicable interludes, as if my brain's the Pentagon secretarial pool, sorting and shredding electrical impulses. Others are short features with a starring cast.
I've had the classic dreams — naked in public or taking a final exam in a class I realize I've never attended.
But most of my dreams are vicarious thrills. I've surfed in Hawaii, escaped a tornado unscathed, landed back in college having midnight spaghetti with friends at Italian Village. One night, I found myself running from a cop's billy club during the 1970 riots I covered for The Daily Egyptian student newspaper. I could almost smell the glue pots and hear the hum of electric typewriters in the Egyptian's barracks newsroom.
This past week I dreamed of my sister who died recently after a long illness. She was coming out of a store on Main Street, young and healthy and promising to visit. That might spook some of you, but Sue was always planning a visit — as soon as she felt better.
In another dream I was inside a bar interviewing two pro football players over a game of air hockey. Then, poof! Next thing I knew I'm in tall grass outside a cabin with a band of angry Indians riding my way.
Thanks to all those cowboy matinees I watched at the Strand theater as a kid, I quickly found a horse — a broken-down nag without a saddle — and could feel myself galloping away. To where I don't know.
Usually we dream to sleep, but once in my life I slept to dream. After someone I was in love with died tragically, I went to bed each night — for months — willing myself to be with them one more time, in a dream world. It never happened.
I've long since moved on, but last year THAT dream finally came calling, so real I got out of bed at 4 a.m., went to the kitchen and jotted it to memory.
A sweet communion, as Lincoln said.
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