In the Garden of My (lucid) Dreams

Hold fast to dreams 

For when dreams go

Life is a barren field 
Frozen with snow.

-Langston Hughes

One of my New Year's resolutions was to keep track of my dreams. To realize this, I started keeping a journal by my bedside and made my best effort (not easy early in the morning) to write down the foggy details of each night's remnants. While I wasn't 100% successful (still am not) I did begin to notice that I was gradually recovering more and more of my sleeping memories. I also began to experience that phenomenon known as "lucid dreaming"; I started becoming more aware of my dreams and was able to influence their course of action, though modestly I admit.

My dreaming also led me to the vine-enveloped gates of nostalgia. Once opened, I found a garden overgrown in bramble and shrubbery. Searching through the dense abundance, I found so many moments I had left behind; like rotting fruit, each was tucked away and sealed within the compost of my childhood. One such memory (which came from a dream that I was walking through a garden) was of stealing berries from my grandma's strawberry patch when I was a little girl. The dream felt so real that when I woke up, I swear, I could taste the sweet juice of ripe strawberries dripping on my tongue and then down to my chin, as it once did a lifetime ago (I was, and still am, quite the messy eater).


Just one dream, but so many feelings and memories. I started to spend my waking hours daydreaming too. This is what I saw (smelled/tasted/felt/etc.,): memories of carefully measuring flour and sugar, cracking open eggs, pickling cucumbers, licking hauntingly sweet maple syrup from the bark of our maple tree. These experiences all took place with my grandmother. Following these thoughts I realized that I've spent most of my adulthood not acknowledging food's true value, yet it has been there for me from the beginning. Perhaps I gave my grandmother all the credit; after all she is, and has been, one of the most influential women in my life. It wasn't just that she loved me and was infinitely kind, although she was; it was that she thoughtfully shared and revealed to me the magic and beauty within nature's greatest gift- her garden.

Me & "Gramio" 

My grandmother was not an expert chef, but she loved to feed her family fresh food. I don't think I have ever tasted, nor will I ever taste, anything better than her ambrosial cooking*. My dreams have helped to reawaken these sensory delights, and in doing so, have highlighted a strong belief that good food is more than the sum of its parts; it is endowed with magical and mysterious qualities that come from the heart and soul of the person (or people) creating it. If you are angry or upset, your food will be too; if you are nervous, that pie may be a touch too tart, and that sauce, too bitter. The emotions that seep into our meals are critical and can result in anything from the best gravy you've ever tasted to a tummy ache an hour after you've eaten. Long term it can make or break you.

I'm not alone in this belief. I have seen it referenced and elaborated on in works such as Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, where certain characters not only infuse positive qualities into their food, but negative ones as well; these qualities range from stubbornness and guilt to resentment and disappointment: "stir(ring) her disappointments into a hot lime chutney which never failed to bring tears to the eyes." Call it a work of fiction if you will, but please, allow me to throw my example into the mix.

As a child I was significantly overweight, and somewhat depressed. I ate a lot of processed, store bought foods such as Entenmann's chocolate fudge cake, frozen pizza, and canned anything. As I got older I tried to diet and exercise, but nothing worked; I just kept growing bigger (and sadder). Then something happened. I moved in with my grandma (the same one referenced above) and I began consuming her home cooked meals daily. They were no doubt healthier than what I was eating before (she grew many fruits and veggies in her own backyard), but they were also endowed with her magic touch.

Us trying on dresses for my mom's wedding

In time I not only lost the weight, but I became happier, and more outgoing and most importantly, I acquired the belief that would, in large part, come to define me: anything is possible. Who knows, maybe one of my grandmother's intangible ingredients, consumed throughout my teenage years, reworked something in my brain and allowed me to believe in this notion unabashedly. I like to think so. It's been my belief and experience that the power for transformation lies in the right ingredients, the right measurements, and the right state of mind. And like that garden of my youth, the garden of my dreams has devised a pathway right back to such a state.

If I can determine my dreams, who's to say I can't also practice lucid living?

It's now up to me to take care and maintain this garden, to plant the fruits of my future and water the shadowy soil below. The compost of my memories has made for fertile ground, ripe and ready to nurture the next generation of hope and ambition. Like my grandmother's cooking, this garden, my life, must be lovingly infused with the divination of my dreams, if it is to grow. Remember, calls a voice from long ago, anything is possible, plant the seed.

Top, left to right: my mom, my grandmother/"Gramio", my great grandmother/"Amma"
Bottom, left to right: my brother Justin & me (wasn't I the cutest?!)

Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers where I can walk undisturbed.

-Walt Whitman

* "ambrosial cooking"-This excludes the one time she forgot the backing powder when making biscuits (she must have been carrying some unpleasant feelings that day). She tried to feed them to my dog Cisco (who once ate his own vomit) but he wouldn’t so much as sniff those inedible creations!