When the lights go down in the City
And the sun shines on the bay
I want to be there in my CitySo you think you’re lonely
Well my friend I’m lonely too
I want to get back to my City by the bayIt’s sad, oh there’s been mornings out on the road without you,
Without your charms,
Tywana’s in Kentucky again this weekend. So, I have a day or so on my own. The Buckeyes manage to lose in primetime to Penn State. But, I was prepared for a stumble from this young team with all of these primetime road games. I’m not too upset. I stay up to watch the SNL cold opening. I can’t miss Alec Baldwin’s Donald Trump after the third debate. Then, I head upstairs to bed. As I turn to climb the stairs I notice the light on the ceiling fan is already on. This has been a common occurrence lately. I don’t know what time it comes on. But, many nights when we head up the stairs, we find it’s already on. I climb into bed and quickly fall asleep.
I wake up around 6 o’clock, my usual time. I’m tired, though. I think I’m going to sleep in today. I roll over and fall back to sleep. Around 8 o’clock, the light on the ceiling fan comes on again. I open my eyes and look at it. “Where is that remote?” Before I can even reach for it, the light goes off. Then, it comes on again. Then, the lights do this little dance, flickering off and on, dimming and getting brighter. I say “Good morning, Shayna.” It goes off and on once or twice more. Then it just stops. The whole thing takes a minute, maybe two.
As I lie there trying to decide on what I’m going to do today, my dreams come back to me and I recall I had a dream about Shayna. She was little about 4 or 5 years old I guess. I spotted her from across the room. She was so beautiful, just like she was when she was in the body. It was a very large room. She was playing with other kids. I knew she wasn’t supposed to be here and that if I pushed too hard, the connection would break and she’d be gone. I went up to her and said hi to her. I asked her for a hug and wanted her to sit on my lap, just for a moment. She was so busy playing she didn’t want to do it. I knew I couldn’t try too hard to persuade her because the connection was tenuous. She agreed to sit in my lap. It was so nice. Then, the scene shifted. We were in a room that had a ceiling that had to be 15 feet high. There was a shelf at about 10 feet with a bunch of candy bars on it of different types. Shayna was asking me to reach them for her and show them to her so she could pick some. My arms magically extended high enough to pick them up and show them to her so that she could choose them. That’s it. Then, the dream was over. As I recall, the dream, I recall the feeling of seeing her face, talking to her and holding her and what joy and peace I had in that dream state.
It’s a brisk, sunny morning. I take my walk at a leisurely pace listening to some NPR this morning rather than my usual spiritual stuff. Just as I’m finishing up my walk, I look down at the sidewalk in front of me and a monarch butterfly is sitting right in the middle of the sidewalk. We rarely see monarchs where I live in Ohio. I don’t know their migration cycle and whether this is normal for it to be here in late October or not. It’s only about 38º this morning, too. I wonder if maybe it’s dead, but as I get close to it, it takes off and flies out of sight.
I decide to cut the grass. There will probably only be one or two more cuttings this season and I will have another milestone behind me. I decide to listen to some Journey. One of the interesting things about the phase I’m in now is I can see a deeper meaning in things I once took only literally. Lyrics that I might not have paid much attention to before take on more symbolic and larger meaning. Lights- a song about the band missing San Francisco when they were on the road, becomes a song about homesickness in general and I’m feeling really homesick. I’m reading a book that describes what Home is like. We communicate without using words. There’s no longing to be with someone. You think of them and you’re there. There’s no time, no distance, no space to separate us. This place is the the road. Home is where Shayna is where the Lights are shining. The signs are nice. The trick with the ceiling fan lights is much appreciated. But, I want to see the City Lights again.
