Lila Blue

by Annie Katz

  At breakfast I told Lila about the dream.

  Instead of having an instant interpretation for me, she did what she always did with my dreams. She asked me questions and focused very intently on everything I said.

  I practically was back in the dream while I described it to her, remembering more details or maybe my imagination was supplying details in response to her questions, so the dream was becoming more complex because we were working on it.

  "What time of year was it?" she asked.

  "Autumn," I said. "It was cold and some of the leaves were turning brown on the bushes."

  "What were you hunting for?"

  "I had to get some meat for us to eat. My dog and I needed food."

  "What kind of meat?"

  "Deer, raccoon, rabbit, birds."

  "What time in history was it?"

  "It was modern times, or not too long ago. The clothes and gun were current."

  "Good," she said. "When you got lost, what were you afraid of?"

  "Not being able to find our way home. Dying. Being lost and cold forever."

  "What message does the dream have for you today?" she asked.

  "I don't know," I said. "Don't go hunting? Remember how to find your way home?"

  She looked at me and nodded, but didn't offer any ideas.

  "Maybe it's about your gun essay, Grandma. I'm scared for you."

  "There is a gun it your dream, and in it you are a man with a gun, and we were talking about fearful people needing guns to feel safer. It could be the way your Dream Mother put all those images together. Does that feel right?"

  "I don't know," I said.

  "Well, pretend you do know. Does it seem right?"

  "No, I don't think that's the message of the dream," I said, and when I heard how certain I sounded, I knew what I said was true.

  "Good," she said. "You are the expert about your dreams, just as you are the only expert on your life, your body, and your health. Listen to your inner voice. Get in the habit of checking with you. You're the boss of you. Other people can give you ideas, but only you can say if they ring true or not."

  "So what does the dream mean?" I asked. It seemed knowing her idea was wrong didn't get me any closer to what was right. "Why can't the Dream Mother say things in plain English? Why does she make us work for the message?"

  "Sometimes she does say things in plain English. Sometimes she commands, and you feel you've heard the voice of God telling you to do or not do something. More often she likes the richness of metaphor, I think. One picture can have many layers of meanings."

  I sighed and drank the last of my coffee, not satisfied to leave the dream alone but not wanting it to be so much work.

  "Okay," Lila said. "Do you still want to work with the dream?"

  "I guess."

  "Try this. Be the man lost in the woods. Talk with his voice. Dialog with him."

  "I don't get it," I said.

  "For example, if it were my dream, I might say, 'Lost man, what are you afraid of?' and he might answer, 'I'm afraid my dog will starve and it will be my fault for not keeping her safe. She trusts me.'"

  "Wow," I said. "Your dream guy would say all that?"

  "Probably. My dream characters like to talk. I ask them one little question and they go on and on. But yours may be more succinct. Try it."

  "Okay," I said. "I'll be the dog." I thought by teasing her I might be able to give up on the whole thing and pretend dreams meant nothing.

  "Good choice," she said.

  "I was kidding."

  "I wasn't," she said. "Be the dog. Ask the dog a question."

  "Dog, what do you want?" I asked, and I could actually see the dream dog looking at me and hear her answer in my head. “The dog says, ‘I want to be with the man, even if we are lost. I love him.’"

  "Interesting," Lila said.

  "What a stupid dog!" I said, suddenly furious at that dog. "She doesn't even care if they both starve to death out in the forest. She should be paying attention to where they are. Dogs have good instincts. They can find their way home in the dark. But no, she's so stupid she'd die for love."

  Lila smiled at me. She didn't say anything, but the look on her face said it all made perfect sense to her.

  "It was only a dream," I said. "Let's go to the beach."

  "You're right," she said. "Let's go."

  We cleaned the kitchen and got on jackets and went down barefoot to walk in the wet sand. Some microbe in the sea was dying and leaving basketball-sized globs of foamy suds at the tide line. The suds were white with a coating of greenish brown gunk on top from being churned in the waves.

  I ran along kicking at the base of the piles of suds to cut them free and watch the wind blow them like tumbleweeds across the beach. They left dirty streaks on the legs of my jeans, but I didn't care. There was a stiff wind coming in from the ocean. The foam critters scurried up the beach like herds of sheep when I cut them loose. Lila laughed when one would leap up and over another or bump into another one and merge with it.

  I kept trying to erase the picture of that stupid dog from my mind, but I couldn't. Then I heard my mother's voice say, "dumb bitch," and I remembered a time when I was in third grade and she'd broken up with a guy or maybe he'd dumped her, and she was calling herself a dumb bitch, saying how stupid she was for falling in love with one jerk after another. She was in her bedroom stripping off her clothes and throwing them on the floor before stepping into the shower, and she was talking to herself as if I weren't in the room. I was so scared I was frozen. I wanted to tell her she was smart and pretty. I wanted to stop her from talking so mean to herself, but I was invisible, as helpless as a shadow.

  Maybe my dream was telling me how scared I was for my mom going off in the wilderness with some man who might get lost and couldn't even take care of himself, much less her.

  After we turned back toward home and I'd tired of kicking suds, I said to Lila, "I think the dream is telling me I'm scared about Janice going off with a man."

  "That sounds right," she said.

  "But why did I think the man was me?" I asked.

  "Did you ever feel you were the strong one in your relationship with your mother?"

  "Yea. Sometimes I feel I am the parent and she is the child. So in the dream, I made myself the powerful one, and got us both lost?" I shook my head. "It's too confusing, Lila. Why does it have to be so complicated?"

  She shrugged and smiled at me. "It's only a dream," she said.

  "Grandma," I said. "You're awful!"

  "I couldn't resist," she said. Then she took off running toward her stairs. "Race you," she called, and she had a good head start before I realized she was serious.

  I ran as hard as I could and jumped on the first step right in front of her.

  "No fair," she said, panting as much as I was. "You're fifty years younger than I am."

  "No fair you!" I said. "I didn't even know it was a race until you were halfway here."

  "Okay," she said. "It was a tie."

  "I won!" I said.

  "You're right, Cassandra," she said, pushing me up the stairs in front of her. "You're the winner."

  After we changed clothes from our walk, we went to Salem. It was fun to shop with Lila. She was patient with me and let me look all around and choose what I wanted. I tried on about a hundred things, and we ended up buying two pair of black jeans, five soft t-shirts in pretty prints, and a long denim skirt that Lila called a petal skirt because it was fitted at the waist and flared out like a flower on the bottom. It looked great with the t-shirts and I knew it would be really pretty with the Mexican blouses.

  I found the perfect soft leather flats that reminded me of ballet slippers. It was easy to choose a blue rain parka with lots of big pockets, but it was harder to find a sweater for school. After trying on more than a dozen, I finally found a beautiful heavy cotton sweater in exactly the same shade of green as my eyes. It had a cozy hood, big side pockets, and a sturdy zipper, and when I tried
it on, it felt like a friend.

  When she'd paid for all that, Lila took me to a different department to get new underclothes, so everything would be new my first week of school. We were both pretending my first day of seventh grade would be in Oregon.

  The other thing I shopped for was boys. Suddenly there were boys, and I really looked at them for the first time, and each one I saw, I asked myself, "Would I like to practice kissing with him?" Most were "no" and some were "maybe" and a few were "yes."

  When I was trying on shoes, there was a very cute boy with his mom and younger brother, and while I was studying his lips, he noticed me and we both looked away and looked back and turned red. Then I didn't look at him until just before we left, and he was looking at me and I smiled and looked away really fast. Noticing such a cute boy who also noticed me made me so nervous and so happy I walked on my tiptoes until I realized what I was doing and stopped.

  We went to a fish place for lunch, and the waiter looked about sixteen and he had very pretty lips and I got so shy, I ordered fish and ships, and he grinned at me, and then I got so flustered I couldn't say anything at all.

  Lila rescued me by saying, "I'll have fish and ships too, and bring us two root beers please."

  "Coming right up," he said, and he grinned at me again, and I wished I could crawl under the table and stay there.

  "Oh, Cassandra, what fun we've had today," Lila said. "Thank you for letting me buy clothes for you. It makes me happy to see you finding your own style. What a delightful person you are!"

  "Grandma, how come you're always so nice? Aren't you ever grumpy?"

  "Yes, sometimes I'm grumpy. But I try not to bother anyone with it. I do my best to clean up my attitude before I'm around others. It's taken many years of practice to be an optimist."

  The cute boy brought our drinks right away, and even though I tried not to look at him, I couldn't help myself. He smiled at me, and I smiled back and felt my face flush scarlet. I was feverish and my heart pounded in my throat. How would I ever get from this space to actually kissing? I might die of embarrassment before I ever touched a boy's lips.

  The meals came then, and he smiled at me again, and I managed to smile at him again without fainting, and then he disappeared into another part of the restaurant, so I was released from the spell long enough for us to eat.

  "Is there anything else you want to look for?" Lila asked between bites of hot fish dipped in tartar sauce. "School supplies or calligraphy pens?"

  "I don't think so," I said. "The pens Kim gave us work fine. I usually wait until school starts. Each teacher wants different things."

  "Good," she said. "We'll head back over the mountains after lunch. I want to do some more writing."

  "Are you writing about guns? Did your prayers tell you to?"

  "My prayers kind of left it up to me to decide. Sometimes when I pray about something, I get a very clear yes or no, but other times the answer is less specific. This time it was, if you want to, if others want you to, you can choose it, but remember you are choosing the consequences too."

  "Did they tell you what the consequences would be so you could make a good choice?"

  She laughed. "No, I guess they left that part up to me to figure out. I think the worst that could happen is some gun owners would be offended. The best that could happen is some kids' lives would be saved. The boy who shot his brother is going to have to live with that the rest of his life. And his parents may always wonder if there was something they could have done to prevent it."

  "When you put it that way, I guess it is worth a try. 'The pen is mightier than the sword,' right?"

  "We'll see," she said. She smiled, but it was more a tired smile than a joyful, everything is wonderful smile.

  That night after dinner Lila let me read the first draft of her essay.

  About Guns: My Point of View, by Lila Blue

  My Dear Friends and Neighbors, when we consider owning anything, we weigh its potential costs, benefits and risks. The lifetime costs of a dog for example can range from fairly inexpensive to very expensive. Vet bills can be high, and food and grooming costs add up. Dogs also need a daily commitment of time and attention to be healthy, happy pets. The benefits of having a dog are considerable though, including devoted love, hours of entertainment, and personal protection. The risks of owning a dog can be high. Your dog might destroy property or hurt someone. It doesn't happen often, but the risk is still there. Dog owners are willing to pay the price and accept the risk, because the benefits far outweigh the cost and liability.

  If we think of the potential costs, benefits, and risks of owning a handgun, we run into similar considerations. The cost is minimal in terms of money and time. You could buy a used nine-millimeter automatic for three hundred fifty dollars. A lock box to keep it in doesn't cost much. Cleaning a gun and keeping your aim sharp require a small investment of time and energy.

  At first glance it makes sense for me to own a gun. I'm a single woman operating a public business. Anyone could walk in and rob me if I didn't have protection. So the possible benefits are great. I might be able to protect my home, my person, my money, my business, and my life if I had a loaded gun in my hand and was willing to use it when someone wanted to harm me.

  Now for the possible risks of owning a handgun. If someone takes my gun away from me, he might feel justified in using it on me. An even greater risk would be if someone who is staying with me, say a child or an adult who is imbalanced due to drugs, alcohol, rage, or depression, somehow finds the gun. We've all made poor decisions. Most of us have been angry, drunk, crazy, stupid, or depressed at least once in our lives. What would have happened if we had been holding a loaded gun in that moment? With a gun, it takes less than one second to end the world.

  Does owning a handgun keep families safe or introduce a serious risk? Does keeping a loaded gun in your car or business protect you or attract violence? Maybe it's time we looked closely at the handgun issue. Let's all sit down together and decide how we want to live.

  Please come to Tuesday night's council meeting and share your experiences and opinions. Together we can make wise decisions about keeping our community safe.

  Lila's column seemed simple and logical, but it made me uncomfortable. I didn't like being afraid, and I trusted Lila, but I'd had some experience with people like my mom and her friends, and they don't like it when you question their decisions or ask them to use simple logic and consider safety issues for children. They don't like to look at anything straight on or sit down at a table and share their experiences. They prefer drinking and swearing or dancing on tables and taking their clothes off. I didn't trust everyone as much as Lila did.

  I bet people didn't like the little kid who said the emperor was naked. They probably slapped him, told him to keep his mouth shut, and didn't take him to any more parades.

  When I woke up the next morning, Marta was having breakfast with Lila in the kitchen. I helped myself to some coffee and fruit, and then went in the living room and pretended to read.

  Marta said, "Randall at the police station agreed to put together a fact sheet on the handgun incidents in the county. We'll publish that next to your column and the notice about Tuesday's council meeting."

  "I'm not happy with my piece yet," Lila said. "I'm not even sure I want to take a position. Let's run one of the breezy nature essays in my backup file. Or the one about how the original Indians managed to tolerate all the rain."

  "Don't wiggle out of this," Marta said. "You're an important voice in the community. We need you to speak up."

  "It's not ready yet," Lila said.

  I wanted to yell, Leave her alone, Marta. Stop using peer pressure on her. But I fumed silently to myself instead of interrupting.

  By the time Marta had left, she'd extracted a promise from Lila to have something ready by press time, which was eight o'clock the next morning. Lila was working at the shop in the afternoon, so that didn't leave much time.

  I took a long walk on
the beach by myself. My feet were used to the icy ocean water now, and I loved being all alone on a huge expanse of white sand in the cool wind with the surf beside me and the gulls overhead.

  I felt big and small at the same time, and sometimes I was outside myself, my soul hovering like a gull six feet over my right shoulder, watching myself walk, think, see, and hear. It was peaceful in the same way swimming laps was peaceful. Nothing needed to be done, said, or defended. I existed in a bubble of comfortable motion, as natural as a bird or a fish, a wave or a cloud.

  I was floating along in that wonderful state, with no one else on the beach and everything serene, when I had a clear vision. I saw my mother on a boat in warm seas. She was wearing a white bikini I'd never seen before. Her hair was sun streaked, and she had it pulled up on top of her head with a barrette, the way she did sometimes when she took a shower. It was daytime, the sun was shining, and she was with a man. His hair was white and he was very tan. They were arguing. She was screaming at him and he was standing there smiling at her as if she were amusing.

  That of course made her even madder, and she threw the drink glass she was holding at him. He deflected it with his arm and it shattered at his feet. His smile turned into something mean then, and he grabbed her arm and shoved her down on the deck on her bare knees. She started picking up the pieces of glass, and as I watched, a trickle of red blood ran out from under her right knee, making a zigzag pattern on the white deck of the boat.

  The image upset me so much I stopped the vision. It was as if my soul jumped back into my body and turned the channel off, click. After I did that, I tried to tell myself I didn't see anything at all, but the experience was as clear as if I'd been hovering over that boat and seen it with my own eyes. I couldn't call it a fantasy or an aberrant brain picture. It was real.

  I needed something solid to feel grounded, so I walked back to the nearest sea wall and used it for a backrest. I slumped down, sat in the sand, and dug my hands and feet into it. With the cold stones against my back, I felt collected, solid, as if I had literally pulled myself back together, so I sat there breathing and trying to quiet my fears until I got so cold I started shivering. Then I forced myself to stand up and walk home.