©S.Kalish
2/22/18

This morning my eyes were pried open by my ears
at 6:00 am, by
a bird that sang in a tree loud and clear
on a cold gray morning, singing a song I had never heard before. Yesterday
was 78°. The bird had been fooled, the seasons
had been spun around but no one notified the singer:
It sang until 6:21.

A younger friend of mine has been near-death in a hospital, not the first time,
she has accident after accident
but remains highly psychic,
all-knowing, her energy is undefeatable,
her body crumbles and her mind escapes:

She was just brought out of an induced coma after three months.

“Call me back, I had a dream about your mother.”

I hesitate. Do I want to know?

I call her number, it rings in a room at New York Presbyterian where she lies in a bed.
She tells me that in the dream I was with my mother in a garden.
My mother was dancing. We were laughing.
I think she said the sun was shining or
maybe that is how I felt her words.
The dream felt warm and bright.

My mother has always said that when she is anxious
she envisions a garden behind a gate:
she opens it, the rusty hinges squeak,
and she enters and finds blueberry bushes that are waiting for her,
ready to be picked.
She fills bowls with berries and eats them with cream;
they are large and sweet and juicy.

My mother has also said that from the time she was a child,
she wanted to be a dancer, a ballerina,
and that the little girl
downstairs took lessons and then would teach her the steps and positions:
This must have happened over ninety years ago
and she still remembers.
I have heard my mother tell everyone she meets, that the secret to a happy marriage is to dance.
That whenever possible my parents danced.

But, my mother was lying. Just like the seasons: Her marriage was not happy despite the dancing.

Now, she appears in a stranger’s dream, in a garden, free.
Dancing. No need for a walker.

“There is something else, I almost forgot,” my friend says, at the other end of the phone:
“An older man is standing outside the garden gate.
He can’t take his eyes off you, he is drinking you in.”
She is talking about me. Me. And I think she is referring to my grandpa, Sam, who died when I was six months old
and now,
I am years older than his age when he passed.

I validate my friend’s dream—the details, the garden, the blueberries, the dance, and am somewhat freaked out but not surprised:
My mother has been strangely calm. She is making peace,
as was the singing bird, at 6:00 am: that it was not springtime in the garden yet.

That it was still Winter.

That it wasn’t time.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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