Dream a little Dream of Me

Yesterday morning, as my 9 year sauntered by, she said, "Daddy, I had a very odd dream....” I told her most dreams can seem odd, but dreams represent a feeling, a mood, a memory, or something from your unconscious. She didn’t understand the word “unconscious”, and I could tell my response was unlike mom’s who would have responded: “Oh baby, was it a scary dream, are you all right?”

The kid stared at the hem of the shower curtain as the morning breeze tickled its slightly molded hem. “... there was a waterfall and a windy mountain top, and these bully boys were guarding this trail....” She tried her best to describe these air and water images, but lingered in thought and then grew tired of the effort of explanation. She tittered on the toilet seat then muttered something about being stronger than those bully boys.

Then I started thinking about my dreaming -- dreaming as a person with an acquired disability. I’ve always found it interesting that I often “see” myself as an able bodied person, walking and talking, no wheelchair, but usually involved in an “odd” scenario of having to take the accessible back-door entrance through the kitchen of a Las Vegas hotel -- before resuming the action upstairs of me against my chain-smoking sister grappling over a translucent cream puff.

However, now at age 50, thirty-three years into quadriplegia, those walking vs. rolling fight scenes are more skewed; less part of the travel method and more about who will go through door #3 with me since my karate chops are weak. And yet, at times, I walk on water and tip-toe through tulips; I fly through the air with the greatest of ease.

I often dream from the perspective as an able-bodied person, but what about blind people? People who acquire vision loss? Folks blind from birth? I decided to call a few friends.

A young lady [my age] who loss her vision in the past 5 years said she seems to have retained lots of visual imagery in her dreams, but acknowledges people have obviously aged and must look different too. When asked if she has an “aged” view of herself in her dreams, she said no -- “I never seem to see myself in my dreams, but I know I am the one starring in the movie.”

A forty-something guy who experienced vision until age 7 said he has retained visual imagery in his dreams too, but his imagery seems to have faded over time -- and I heard him describe his dreams in terms of places and surroundings.

An older man blind from birth described his dreams in terms of taste, smell, and made lots of tactual sensory references. He asked me if these references were unusual for me as a sighted dreamer. I said that I might recall a specific reference, but every dream is a very visual thing.

I suppose deaf people -- those deaf from birth and those latecomer deaf, experience another realm of “silent films.”

And you thought this disability thing was less-than-fascinating.....

Tell that to an 9 year old.