her able hands

I’m going in late this morning because the daycare is closed and I’ll have to drag the bean and a bag of tricks along with me, so we slept in a little bit. My dreams when I fall back to sleep in the morning tend to be much more lucid and visceral than my nighttime dreams.

This morning I heard Chris get up at 5:00 and take a shower, and then I drifted back into the clouds forming around my head. I dreamed that the house we live in (not this house, but a giant, sprawling Victorian house with many levels and rooms with built-in cabinets and bookcases with glass fronts, long, bright hallways, tall windows with luminous draperies and plush furniture) was once owned by Robert Downey Jr.

I didn’t know it until we threw a party—a huge costume party with a Celestial Beings theme and everybody wore wings and glitter and halos and had a diaphanous aura around them. Robert Downey Jr. was in the family room with me and a few other women. He went up to a blank wall that had a dial on it, something I had never noticed before, and turned the dial and the wall turned into fifty TV screens, each showing the picture of a single person or thing.

He began a game where he told us to each take turns finding things on screens that began with the letters in our name. Every time we called out a letter/picture, he touched that screen and it grew brighter. We did this until all of the screens were lit and the entire room glowed so brightly we could see through each other.

I didn’t come out and ask how he did it; how he knew the TVs were there when we had no clue after living in the house for almost a year. But I sat down in a deep couch next to him and sipped my Champaign and watched the wall. He watched me. I tried to pretend that I couldn’t feel him looking at me, to ignore the growing vibration of energy between us that was like a third person on the couch. He said, “This was my house. The first house I bought with my own money. I got a little lost though, and forgot how much I loved it here.”

I tipped my head back into the cushion and said, “We can’t believe how lovely it is here. This house is perfect.”

“I miss it, the love.”

“Maybe that’s why it feels so good here, maybe you left your love behind.”

“I think I need some of it back.” He looked away.

“If it’s yours it’s there for you, right? You just have to acknowledge it.”

He turned his face to me again and tears had cut wavering tracks through the glittery pancake makeup he had powdered his face with. We looked into each other’s eyes in that bright, bright room for a long time, hearing each other’s thoughts about our own lives, not speaking. It sounded like a chorus in my head and I couldn’t tell which thoughts were mine, which were his. It all gets away from me so quickly. How can I get it right? I don’t know how to make myself feel better. Why is it so hard? I miss feeling adored. I don’t have the energy to take care of anyone anymore. I miss the newness. Who am I? I wish the feelings stayed the same. Who are you? What does this here, right now, mean?

Then we kissed and all of the tension I’d carried inside of me my entire adult life drained out of my body. I felt every self-imposed expectation pop and fizzle up and out like the airy carbonation bubbles dancing onto my hand from my glass of Champaign. Chris stood in the doorway watching us. He smiled and nodded and I heard him thinking Thank God, she’s letting go.

***

All this to say that Chris and I have been at each other’s throats a bit lately, and it’s such a gift when the dreamtime tells me to stop holding on to my position so tightly. And it’s a super big bonus when it throws in a little necking with Robert Downey Jr.

Hot damn. The man can kiss.