Tuesday 10 January 2023

After prayers, I lay down for a short nap, feel asleep immediately and was taken into this vivid dream sequence, with vivid, crisp imagery:

My Dad appears, in his working dress uniform, with 3 or 4 rows of his service ribbons. He and I were going to see Mom in some hospital. We were walking together through a large open lobby. I am sidetracked by seeing someone I know, someone I’m working with. Dad goes on ahead a little ways, out of sight, around a corner. I stop to talk about some work/technical thing, and I’ve been doing that for a couple of minutes when I hear the command voice:

“Frank! Let’s go! Now!”

I smile at my friend, say goodbye, and go with him. We go through a set of doors and are faced with two long lines of people slowly going through some sort of security. There is an immediate command decision that we’re not doing that, so we turn left and go through another set of glass doors, into another long corridor. Somehow I know that he is going up a couple of floors, and that I am to go outside, around to the back of the building, to check on something.

I find myself behind the building where there are trucks and trailers parked, as well as 20-ft containers and boats covered in brown tarps. I am ankle-deep in soft, squishy brown mud, having to pull each foot out with effort as I go along. Moving past the covered vehicles and boats, I round the corner of the building. I know I am supposed to meet Dad out front, but I need to wash my boots off.

At the corner of the building is a crystal-clear cold stream flowing and I dip my boots in; left first, then right. The mud is gone, but something has my right foot. Its some sort of prickly tendril of a weed-like thing, trying to wrap itself around my foot. It is trying to work itself into the boot-lace eyelets. I bend over, see into the clear water, gently but firmly un-wind the thing – it pricks my fingers. But I am able to pull it out from the laces, pull it out from underneath and around my boot, and drop it in the clear flowing water.

I know Dad is now waiting, it is bright and sunny, my boots are clean and I walk on.

And then awake with a start.