Secret Dream

Little sweetheart, I had a dream last night/this morning part of which is a recurring one.

Also, it was one of those dreams where when you’re with someone, the person is really almost two different people in the same person. That happened twice in the dream. In the beginning of what I remember, I was in a car with some combination of JFK and your brother Jesse. I'd just come from having talked with your dad who was excited and overjoyed about a trip we were, all of us together, about to go on with Jesse, himself.

Back in the car, I’m with Jesse/JFK. And he’s telling me some secret something that he’s also written down in its entirety in a sealed letter he gives to me. After he tells me, we’re sitting at a traffic light. He says bye for now and gets out.

When the light changes, I’m in the drivers seat (I think I may have been the entire time but I’m not sure) but it’s pushed all the way up and I can’t see or feel what I’m doing. This is the part of the dream I now recognize as recurrent - behind the wheel of a car I don’t know how or cannot control, having forgotten how to drive or simply impaired in trying to do so. But I try anyway - take a leap of faith and somehow get things straightened out, maneuvering through the danger and traffic. I get there.

“There” turns out to be someplace beautiful, ceremonial, official - The White House? - where I try it give the letter to someone, again a combination of persons in one person. Something like both Jackie Kennedy and your mom. She’s a little more like your mom than Jackie but still… She’s wary about taking the letter. It’s for me, she says. But you - in the very best part of the dream that I can still feel the most vividly and the most tactilely, the feeling lingers - you are there behind me with your hands on my shoulders, pushed up close, your body against mine, your cheek to my my cheek, your breath in my ear, encouraging me.

I tell your mom/Jackie what’s in the letter. You are urging me on. It is important and resonant to us all. We all need to know the letter’s contents. It’s for each and all of us. A secret we need to know and hold dear. It’s good news and explains everything.

Naturally - much like the Arthur Miller dream where he put his arm around me and told me he had three things to tell me about playwrighting - when I woke, I couldn’t remember the message, the content.

But, perhaps that’s not important. What is, I think, was how happy your dad was. I think he already knew. And that you were there so palpably that I can still feel your hands on my shoulder. I know exactly what your touch feels like and this was it.

It’s the best dream I’ve had in ages, solely for that. Thank you, little sweetheart. Always be with me. I suspect you already are. Closer than I can imagine.

We Must Be Kind

Little sweetheart, I was watching a documentary the other night on Netflix. It's about the 60's and an entire segment of it was about JFK. There was an enormous amount of footage I had never seen before and one sequence has stayed with me now for days. It's news reports from the streets on New York as people listen to car and portable radios, gathered around on the sidewalk trying to hear news after word has come out the President has been wounded in Dallas.

There's a very kind, shy and altogether lovely older woman there among them who the reporter approaches. She's listening with such quiet care and worry, my little sweetheart, and the reporter asks her what she thinks. She says something very quietly, terribly concerned and then, full of love, unguardedly, unexpectedly, exclaims "we have the same birthday!" And then smiling through her fears, "I'm just crazy about him."

Moments later in the film, after they've shown the famous sequence when Cronkite confirms the President's passing, they cut back to the street scene where the same news is coming over the car radio. That same crowd is gathered around and that nice old lady is close by too. At that moment as the news can be heard, there is a collective gasp, and the poor lady reels backward, literally jumping, as though she's been struck. She shrinks back into the thick of the crowd on the sidewalk, surrounded yet all alone, so very alone, and weeps.

My little sweetheart, people are good. People are so very lovely and kind and excited in wonderful guileless ways about things that touch their lives. And we are all so terribly terribly fragile. You taught me so much, my darling. And this is one of those things. We must be kind. In every way we can, with every chance we get, we must be kind to one another. We're all hurting. And we simply must be kind. And when we do show kindness, our hearts are one - mine flies to you, feels your touch and I know I will be with you forever because in that instant I am.

That nice lady, so very hurt, broken with sorrow, inconsolable -my heart goes out to her too in this moment captured before we were even born. I think it's meant to. Maybe she's even passing you by as I write this. Maybe wherever we go we feel it when someone, even someone we've never known, thinks of and feels for us. May it be so. May I love the way you taught me to, the way you taught and grew my heart. May we love one another. Love has no limits. It is boundless. May I act in love. I know it redounds to and reaches you.

Give that lovely woman a hug for me, little sweetheart. Tell her that your sweetheart, Michael, was just telling you about her. That he's so sorry. And that it's a little bit late - or maybe not because what is time? I know you know now. Maybe it's all going on all the time - but that he sends all the comfort and understanding and love in the world to her and all through you. Because you taught me, didn't you, little sweetheart? You showed me love. Until that day. Until that day! With love forever...