Dreams 

ed I miei sogni usati, Ed I bei sogni miei, tosto si dileguar 

Pam had seen enough French and Italian in her art studies to get the gist of the words on the page in front of her.  

She was sitting small and patient in the cool, quiet confines of the library, waiting for Jim to emerge victorious from among the stacks and shelves with whatever book he was hunting today. She’d checked out her own selections already, stowing them carefully beside her ever-present sketch pad in the large, colorful bag she now carried. She loved the way the bag felt, bold and artistic on her shoulder, a sign to other initiates that she was a student, an artist, like them.  

She had sat down at random, and picked up the nearest book discarded by some earlier reader. She didn’t know the title or the author, the context or even the exact meaning of the words, but she saw them and, as sometimes happens, they spoke to her.  

“Now all my past dreams, my beautiful dreams, have melted at once into thin air.” 

Pam knew about dreams. She’d held many quiet, colorful dreams as a younger woman. They hadn’t died or gone away. Instead, she’d packed them up and stored them carefully in her heart’s attic and under her soul’s bed while she lived days and months and years with someone who didn’t care about dreams and never suspected the vast storage spaces behind her smile.

Once she found herself alone, she sorted through the old dreams, discarding those no longer appealing or possible, and carefully examining the rest. With a few art classes and some new clothes, she found that she could salvage a few. But there was one dream she couldn’t realize but wouldn’t throw away. She stored it carefully and tried to pretend it wasn’t there.  

Soon, however, new dreams appeared. Despite her efforts to ignore her dreams of Jim, Pam dreamed about the day she’d see him again. It finally happened, but it wasn’t what she had dreamed about at all. So she dreamed about how she might tell him how she felt. She dreamed about both dramatic confessions and quiet moments of realization, about coincidences leaving them together and about finally, deliberately creating a chance. She dreamed about ways that Jim would break up with Karen, or that Karen would break up with Jim. She dreamed about beautiful other realities in which neither Karen nor Roy had ever existed. She dreamed about possible futures- engagements, weddings, children, careers, whole lifetimes with Jim, always Jim, by her side. 

And then one day, with a half smile and an invitation to dinner, Jim stepped back into her world. Fully, completely, truly back. Jim was real. He was a hand to hold and a shoulder to cry on, a mouth to kiss and a body to embrace. In the water and sunshine of his love, Pam’s vague dreams took shape as goals and hopes and aspirations. Content and hopeful, she was joyfully living each day for itself, looking forward to whatever would happen tomorrow.  

ed I miei sogni usati, Ed I bei sogni miei, tosto si dileguar

Her beautiful dreams had melted into thin air, but not because they had died or been hidden away. With the reality of Jim at her side, she simply didn’t need them any more.