Dreams Don't Come True (with kittens)

The fierce and adoring Grandma, the day-dreamy and whimsical me, and Mads (kicking and punching in my belly)

The Breaking Bad News With Baby Animals postcard I sent to Grandma the other day announced (with kittens), “Dreams don’t come true.” It just happened to be the one I grabbed from my stationery box, but also, it seemed a particularly astute message for her, regarding me. My grandma had a lot of big dreams for me--she has dreamt bigger, longer, wider, in more vivid technicolor for me than any other person ever has, myself included. And I wonder: if she is disappointed (and how can she not be), is that disappointment directed at me or at the unfair, chaotic, unsympathetic world in which I live. Is it the economy’s fault that when my name is Googled one finds - nothing -. Or is it mine?--my timidity, my lack of ambition and resolve, my belief that the world is an unthinking, unfeeling place and a person like me never had a chance?

I never became a writer (not in the way that counts, anyway). I don’t have any money and struggle constantly upstream. Since high school, I’ve managed to keep my figure more or less, but even my once beautiful mop of wild, curly hair has since diminished into a straggly, thin, lackluster mess.

My grandmother believed me to be not only a great beauty, but a great mind. And here I am toiling away in the service industry--I am a retail automaton--the highlight of my work day when a sales rep brings in grocery store deli cookies as a bribe. I am dropped off at work most days, wearing a backpack and carrying a lunch bag, like a child.

Has my lack of success and mobility hurt my grandmother, the one who dreamed for me?

I think about this a lot because now I dream. I dream not for myself but for my son. Even if I make nothing of myself, I have made him--a great beauty and a great mind. How could he not make more of himself than I have? It’s so obvious he’s destined for great things. He is better than me. I love him, and his dad loves him. I was damaged, you know, by people who did not dream for me so ardently as my selfless, obsessed grandmother. But my son--he’s not damaged. He doesn’t need to struggle.

But what if he does anyway?

When I talk about, ponder aloud, the things my son will become, am I doing him a disservice? Should I shut my mouth and just give him the space to be and breathe and become?


Or, is my dreaming for him a vote of confidence, one which will bolster and sustain him when he's a man making his way in the world? Will he pack my dreams for him into his rucksack when he leaves my arms and home to go to college or travel the world or protest tyranny or divide and conquer or whatever it is he will do?

Grandma's dreams for me have certainly never felt like a burden, but they haven't done much to propel me forward either (through no fault of my grandmother's). And, I suppose my attitude regarding my son's future, the weight on which I put success, depends in part on what my definition of success (for him or in general) is. Do I want him to be happy more often than he is sad? Absolutely. Or, at least, content. Do I want him to give and receive love freely and gracefully? Yes, of course. Do I want him to have money? -- Well, it's not the most important thing compared to contentment and love, but I imagine having just the right amount of money might make his days run that much smoother.

I consider the example I set for him in reaching those goals. I am hard on myself, often aloud. I get frustrated not because my life is not as my grandmother imagined it, but because it is not as I imagined/imagine it. I'm not talking about my family, my home, my town, or even my job; I'm talking about the little daily burdens and messes that trip me up--the unending dishes, double booking events for my son, poorly planned and hastily tossed together holiday and birthday celebrations, the inability to consistently schedule in time for my creative pursuits (like this), the list of projects and To Dos with not a thing crossed off.

My son has witnessed me cry and tantrum because we arrive at the Dorthea Dix sunflower field one week too late and discover all the flowers have shriveled up and died. He has heard and felt me snap because I wake too late and now must hurry through my day without transcribing that nagging thought/reverie/idea onto paper.

And, my son has wailed at a busy playground at the realization that he and Ella won't be able to play on the swings at the same time, that image he held of the two of them side-by-side and in the air after a week apart, squashed. He has groaned, "I can't do anything," and "it won't be perfect," when attempting to paint a portrait of himself doing barre work at his ballet studio. He has the paper, the pink and grey paints, but when he puts brush to paper he is dissatisfied and hurt.

I tell him, "there's no such thing as perfect," and when he still grumps and thrusts his paintbrush down ask, "Do you believe me?"

This is the work of his childhood and my parenthood (and adulthood). All my dreams for him, however loose and magnanimous, will mean nothing if we cannot get over this hump and heap of defeat regarding the disparity between expectation and reality--our imaginings of what life should look like and what we should be capable of, he and I both.

The lesson, of course, the one I am learning on behalf of myself and my son is not that dreams don't come true, but: Dreams Aren't Real (with kittens).