“You look beautiful”

I’m lying on Laura’s couch, my eyes closed, hands resting on my stomach. I share a dream I had the previous evening. “I’m in the church that Jenn and I got married in,” I begin. “I'm looking at the church altar, and I have this thought: Because my dad refused to go to my wedding, it follows that he’s never going to call me again. And that’s it. That’s my dream.”

“It’s weird,” I continue. “I often wonder whether I’m going to ever talk to my dad again. Jenn thinks he could go several years without calling me. But the dream is wrong. My dad did go to my wedding.”

Laura doesn’t say anything. Because Laura usually doesn’t say anything. And so I proceed to talk about my dream the way Freud taught his patients to talk about dreams, taking each part of the dream and sharing what associations come to mind when I think of that part. I start with the thought I had about my dad in the dream, and this leads to some memories about my engagement.

“My entire engagement was kind of awful. My dad was awful. It’s like he was going through the stages of grief about me getting married. First, there was denial: him telling me that I was not under any circumstance going to marry Jenn. Next came anger: if I insisted on getting married, fine, but he needed me to know that he would never like Jenn. No matter how long we stayed married, he would never like her. Then came bargaining: if I postponed my wedding six months, I would have ‘more’ of his blessing. The anger never really went away, but he finally kind of came to acceptance: he didn’t want me to hire another photographer for the ceremony — no, no, he and his brother would photograph the wedding.”

I return to the dream, remembering how the church altar looked in it. This leads to some memories about my wedding day. My first few associations don’t really go anywhere, but I then recall the end of the wedding reception. “It was late afternoon. Jenn and I were exhausted, like any newly married couple would be. But my dad and his family insisted that we go to a nearby park to take more wedding pictures. And we felt like we couldn’t say no. So we end up driving over to the park, and then we have to wait for my dad’s mother to return from her house with her dogs. She for some reason felt she needed wedding pictures with the dogs.”

Laura says nothing, so I continue, recalling what an unpleasant experience it was — Jenn dirtying her wedding dress as we posed on an old wooden bridge, the dogs scurrying around, Jenn and I just wanting to begin our honeymoon. “I think I feared that saying no to additional pictures would have hurt my grandmother’s feelings. It would have definitely incurred my dad’s wrath. Not that his wrath ever really went away.”

I proceed to share another dream I’d had the previous evening. “So in this dream I’m at dinner with my zayde, my mom’s dad. A lot of us are there. We’re sitting at this big table. And Matthew Modine is there. Or maybe it’s Matthew McConaughey. I’m sitting next to my cousin Krystal. And my zayde hands me a package of food wrapped in a brown paper bag. This makes me feel special. He’s given me, and only me, this special package. I open the package and feel disappointed when I see he’s given me some canned tuna fish. I guess I was expecting something else. But it’s okay. I still feel special. My zayde gave me, only me, a special gift.”

It seems like a nonsense dream, like there’s not much to it, but I nonetheless begin to follow my associations. “The brown paper bag reminds me of school lunches. When I was in elementary school my mom would pack my lunches in those bags. I remember this one day, I was in the fourth grade, and it was Grandparents’ Day at school. And my bubbie and zayde came to my classroom. My bubbie had made me lunch, and she was holding a brown paper bag. I remember them standing inside the classroom door. I got up, quickly walked over to them, looking at the floor the entire time, and took the lunch bag. I don’t know if I even said anything to them. I might have just returned to my desk. I felt so embarrassed.”

“You felt embarrassed,” Laura says.

“Yeah, like so embarrassed. I don't even know why. I remember during elementary school, my mom would sometimes volunteer at my school, and I loved my mom — you know how much I love my mom — but the thought of interacting with her in front of my classmates was mortifying. And she knew I felt that way. It’s like we had this understanding, it’s like, ‘If I see you at school, I’m going to pretend I don’t know you, and you’re going to pretend you don’t know me.’ And that’s just how it was. She never gave me a hard time about it.”

I think about this before continuing. “It wasn’t personal with my mom. And it wasn’t personal with my bubbie and zayde. I don’t know, I just felt shy, awkward. Sometimes I would be the class clown, but other times I just wanted to be invisible. Sticking out, being exposed — it felt terrifying. And so when they visited my classroom, I felt like everybody’s attention was on me. It’s like there was suddenly this big spotlight on me, and I felt so vulnerable, so idiotic, ridiculous. I just wanted to be invisible again. I think maybe I uttered thank you to my bubbie under my breath. And then I took the lunch sack and returned to my seat. And they — they knew how I felt — and they left.

“And of course I felt bad about it. I felt bad for being so weird. I felt guilty for being rude to my grandparents. I really loved them. I remember after school I asked my mom if they had visited my sister’s classroom that day. She told me that they had. She told me that my sister had invited them to lunch, and they ate lunch with her and her classmates. Before I could feel deeper shame, my mom added that my bubbie and zayde knew that I didn’t want them to stay but that that was okay. Just the way my mom talked to me — she made my awkwardness, my shyness, seem like the most normal, most acceptable thing in the world. She knew I could be like this. My bubbie and zayde knew I could be like this. That’s just how I was, and that was okay.”

My eyes start to feel heavy with tears. I think back to the dream, my zayde giving me a bag of tuna fish when I’d been hoping for something else. “I think that maybe that day — when my bubbie and zayde came to my class — maybe my bubbie had packed a tuna fish sandwich. I don’t know, maybe not. Anyway, I don’t know why in the dream I felt disappointed with tuna fish. I’d been expecting another type of food. It’s weird.”

I now associate to my zayde’s black-eyed peas. I explain how amazing they were. I hear my voice rise with excitement as I tell the story of his black-eyed peas, how he kept adding to them every year, kept perfecting them. “When I was an adult, my bubbie would give us all a ziplock bag of his black-eyed peas every New Year’s Eve. And when she learned how much I loved them — I would just rave about them — she started to give me two bags. She didn’t give anyone else two bags, just me. I think I’m the only one who loved them that much.”

One association leads to another, and now I’m talking about the last time I saw my zayde. It was the weekend before he died. He was receiving home hospice care, and because of his medications, he was now spending most of his time sleeping. When he woke up, he was increasingly confused.

“I went to their house on a Saturday morning. My zayde had been sleeping in his recliner, but when I arrived, he woke up. I walked over to him, maybe to shake his hand like I would always do. He taught me how to shake hands, always told me how important a firm handshake was. And then he looked up at me from his recliner. His eyes got big. And he said, ‘Donny!’ He wasn’t confused when he saw me. He knew it was me. He said my name with so much enthusiasm, just like he always did. And then he said, ‘You look beautiful.’ He would often say that to me. He knew who I was, and he thought I looked beautiful. And then he shut his eyes and went back to sleep.”

I can feel the tears start to seep through the corners of my eyes. I tell Laura that the dreams seem connected. She asks what I think the connection is. “I don’t know. My paternal grandparents wouldn’t have been so understanding on Grandparents’ Day. My grandmother would have had her feelings hurt. I would have received some correction from my father. Just like I would have hurt her feelings had I told her on my wedding day that I didn’t want to have my pictures taken with her dogs.”

I return to the dream with the paper sack. “In that dream I didn’t receive the gift I’d wanted. I wanted something else, but he gave me tuna fish. Now that I think about it, my bubbie and zayde gave me a gift that day at my school. I don’t think I realized that until now. The gift wasn’t the sack lunch. It was understanding. It was acceptance. That’s what they gave me. I don’t think they fully understood why I felt so socially awkward, but they knew I felt that way, and they were okay with that. They gave me the gift of just letting me be me. My mom gave me that gift too. She didn’t try to change me. She didn’t make me feel bad. She just let me be me.”