Supplies

The dream is in black and white, like a pencil drawing with no shading. Just black areas and white areas. No gray. Colby is driving a Jeep and I am sitting in the passenger seat next to him. Colby's hair is longer and darker and messier than when I have seen it in other dreams, and his clothes are spattered with mud. The Jeep is also mud spattered. It has a stick shift and Colby's entire body is turned toward me, including his right calf, which rests on the seat next to the stick shift, his lower leg bent back toward him. If there is a top on the Jeep it is either folded down or has been removed. The temperature is perfect. I feel neither warm or cold.

There is no steering wheel or gas pedal in the Jeep, but somehow we navigate through a large area of rubble. Colby uses the stick shift a few times, but I can't tell how that affects where we are going or how we get there. We are talking in this dream, but we do not say anything; the conversation between us is in our heads. I am so happy to see that Colby is relaxed, at ease with himself, and confident.

Colby tells me he spends his time helping people in this Jeep and he is taking me to where he will be working this day. Soon after that we come to a stop. The area where we are is still littered with rubble and in the near distance people mill about. Colby tells me he is bringing the people supplies. Surprised, because I did not feel like we were hauling anything, I turn around to look in the back of the Jeep. The supplies we are bringing are not those kinds of supplies, he says.

I ponder that for a while and then ask why we do not get out and bring the supplies to the people. Colby replies that the people have to come to us. I watch the people and comment that the people act as if they do not know we are here. It's okay. Some will see us, he says. Some will come for the supplies. I have the feeling that the supplies are in the form of information or guidance, and I wake up then, not knowing if the people are here on Earth or over in Colby's world.

Ornaments

I pull the empty Christmas boxes out of the garage and up the steps to the living room where I deposit them on the living room floor. Then I turn and survey my mom's Christmas tree. It is an artificial tree, a little taller than 6 feet, and it is loaded with ornaments, some of which date back to the 1950s. Each ornament has a story, a history, a place in our family.

I begin to pull ornaments off the tree. one by one, wrap them and place them in a box. Here's the tiny plastic horse jumping over a fence that a friend's mother gave me the Christmas I was eight. Here are the little metal raspberries that our local gas station used to give away during the holidays. Each one is a different color and I remember how excited I was when we got enough gas for me to go inside the station and choose a new one. Here's the angel I got in Hawaii, the beautiful ornaments with loops of hanging pearls that our neighbor made 50 years ago, and the painted birds that look so realistic that every cat we've had has tried to "catch" one.

I make selective picks from the tree, delaying the time when I have to take the loops of colored paper that Colby made when he was three. My hands shake as I touch the paper and tears roll down my face. as I lovingly wrap the paper in tissue and place it in the box. Next is the reindeer head made from Popsicle sticks. Colby made a dozen or more that year, the year he was eight, and gave them to everyone he knew. Then there are the pine cones Colby painted when he was 14, the lovely star ornament he gave my mom when he was 20, and the Snoopy ornament he gave me last year. By this time I have to sit down, the tears are falling so fast I cannot see.

The last ornament is the spire at the top of the tree. This was always Colby's job, to take the spire off and it was one of the last things we'd do before we left Minnesota to head back to Nashville. Mom always had the tree up and decorated by the time we arrived, but we always took it down. Even when he was small, two, three, four years old, I'd lift him up to the top of the tree and he'd carefully pluck the ornament and reverently hand it to me.

I reach for the spire. It's the second spire we've had in my lifetime. This one must be about 30 years old. I am all cried out by this time. The spire is wrapped and packed and I carry five boxes of ornaments back to the garage. I don't know if I can do this again. Next year. Next year, if the tree goes up at all, it may be better to hire someone to take it down, for there are too many memories, too many painful remembrances of the one person who should be here . . . and is not.