There was a recurring dream in my childhood, and I only remember its ending. A witch is about to chase me down a long hallway. I'm at one end. She's at the other. I have to get away. I have to get to the safety of my parents' room. That's when I wake.
I remember the house we were living in at the time, so I know I had to be at least nine years old. I don't imagine I was too much older than that because each time the dream occurred I would dash to my parent's room where my mother slept on the side nearest the door. I touched her arm and watched her eyes open slightly. She'd lift the covers, and I'd slip in next to her.
The extra blessing of waking and being allowed to climb into bed with my parents is that not once did the dream come back the same night. Bad dreams couldn't penetrate her shield of safety.
There's a certain kind of sadness in growing too old for some childish actions. We reach a point where we no longer dare consider crawling into bed with mother and father. It's part, I suppose, of the childhood struggle for independence.
That's when we begin to have another kind of dream. A dream of became famous, of becoming a doctor, lawyer or teacher. Girls play with their dolls and imagine being the best mother in the world, as good as their own wonderful mother or ten times better than a woefully inadequate parent.
Depending on where you live, what you read or watch on television, and what else you face in your everyday life, dreams may expand to include raft trips down the Mississippi like Huck Finn and Jim. We, too, can save runaway slaves. In lieu of a raft, we'll steal a boat. After all, it's for a good cause, and we can do anything we choose in our daydreams.
Family, travel, career, adventure, rescues and happy endings filled our minds during childhood. My dreams were a family that, unlike mine, got along all the time, smiling and hugging and never a cross word. What I didn't know is that even the Cleavers, the Nelsons and the Andersons had their moments of anger and disappointment.
While I dreamed of traveling to Japan, in actuality I settled for teenaged pen pals and even now continue to exchange letters with one of them. Have I been to Japan? No.
In our childhood I think we latch on to famous figures and use them to set target career goals. Mine was Erle Stanley Gardner's Perry Mason. I never did become a trial lawyer but there is some part of that idea that has followed me through life. Mason helped those in distress and helped people discover truths about themselves and their lives. I like to think that in my lifetime, I have followed a similar path in helping others.
Childhood dreams are where we start experimenting with ideas for the future. They take us out of the present, sometimes when we can't stand to be there one more minute. It's like trying on new shoes, year after year. As our feet grow, so do our minds and our imaginations. We take into consideration every piece of the world around us, from our own bedroom to the news of the nation and the world. We listen to the grownups around us. We sort through their words and their evident emotions. We pick and choose what suits us at the time and project it into our present, but mostly our future.
When better to dream than when we are children? There's a certain element of safety to the time and place that will forgive our changing our minds over and over, as well as the mistakes we make. Children need to dream of the future, of their future. And, hopefully, when we are adults, we will continue having childlike dreams that lead us to create and discover bigger and better parts to our world.