So Many Rooms

Last year, I read the five volumes of The Selected Journals of L.M. Montgomery (author of Anne of Green Gables). I learned she had the same fears as me, the same rebellion, and the same self-talk. She made me think about happiness and my desire for it. But another thing I noticed, I'd forgotten until the book I'm reading now (her biography by Mario Henley Rubio, The Gift of Wings): My favorite author and I totally had the same dream.

Actually, we had several of the same dreams, but this one in particular, is an actual dream - the kind when you're asleep. You could call it recurring. I love this dream, and so did Montgomery. I bet some of you have had it, too. In the dream, you realize your house has all these extra rooms you forgot about and haven't been using. Usually for me, it's basically a wing. Once, it had more than one level, and it was beautifully furnished - if not exactly "me".

I love wondering what the heck that dream is about. Usually, in the dream I am so relieved to remember these rooms exist, because I need them, for goodness sake. Discovering the rooms always solves my problems - though usually in a less than perfect way, e.g., they really need remodeled, but at least we have more space. And the dream is so real that for a day or so I can actually feel like my life has improved by "that thing I figured out the other night ... what was it again?"

Home is one of my words, as you know. It's a big deal to me. Listen to this by Mary Rubio in The Gift of Wings:

"life was speeding up after the war. More and more events were crowded into each week. Home was becoming the base from which you operated your life, not a private sanctuary in which you lived your life.

In my head, home is the latter - the private sanctuary in which my real life happens. So, you can imagine the thrill when I discover it's even more spacious than I thought.

Of course, you know, the symbolic could also be true. The dream could represent the fact that everything we need is at our fingertips. The courage to change, the serenity to accept, the wisdom to know - all that. It's in us or near us, or just around the bend in the road, or just up the stairs and through that door we think of as a closet because we forgot it holds all those extra rooms. There's no feeling I love more than the unshakeable belief that my breakthrough is already on the way. Unless it's the realization that there is indeed enough space for the mud room of my dreams - the oversized cubbies and quaint, chubby hooks, and all.