Jerry pap Wilson

Do you dream at night? I’ve met folks who say they rarely dream and folks who say they never dream. I’m a dreamer born from a family of dreamers.

Pap and Granny both had and have vivid dreams. The sort of dreams you share with one another because you just can’t get them out of your mind. The girls are continuing our tradition of dreams. There’s hardly a morning that I don’t hear them discussing their head movies. Granny would be upset if she knew they were telling them before breakfast-something she never does for fear they’ll come true. When she used to caution me about telling dreams before breakfast I’d say “But what if I want them to come true?” She never answered my question.

One night last week I dreamed I was on a farm for a special day of eating and visiting. Actually it was Blind Pig reader Sam Ensley’s farm, yet in the way of dreams the man looked nothing like Sam and truthfully I don’t even know if Sam has a farm.

There were children about everywhere and many of them had been taking turns riding Sam’s horses. As we gathered to eat, the children, especially one little girl, showed me the flowers they had picked from the yard. Many were weeds and I was amazed as the children told me the uses of each bloom how one might help when you had a cold and another when you had a bad case of poison oak.

Sam and the other men unsaddled the horses to put them back in the pasture. As I stood on the porch with the children I was alarmed when Sam sent the horses running down the little two lane highway. I need not have worried because Sam’s horses were special-quick as a wink they jumped the fence and put themselves back in the pasture.

Relived the horses were fine I turned my attention back to the children’s table where I was going to sit and eat my dinner with them. It was then that I noticed Sam and all the children had yellow throats. Not yellow like jaundice, but yellow like the brightest spring daffodils or the cheeriest dandelion you ever saw. The last part of the dream I recall is thinking to myself “No wonder the children know so much about blooms, they must be part flowers themselves.”

I was off work the day following my colorful dream of flowers, children, running horses, and yellow throats. I had promised to spend the day helping Granny do whatever she wanted me to do around the house. First on her list was to visit Pap’s grave.

Every year just before Memorial Day the cemetery is cleaned up in preparation for a new season of decoration days and homecomings. My brother Steve removed all the flowers on Pap’s grave to prevent them from being thrown away and then he took some of them back once the graveyard had been cleaned. Granny had re-done the arrangement that fits over the headstone and was anxious to get it back on the grave.

We had just turned onto the road that leads to the cemetery when Granny said “You know Charlotte’s little granddaughter? She told Paul that she put some yellow flowers on your Daddy’s grave because there wasn’t none on it. Paul told her thank you and that we had just moved the flowers while they cleaned up the cemetery.”

I’ve only seen Charlotte’s granddaughter one time that I know of and probably couldn’t pick her out from a group of girls if I tried, but somehow she and her yellow flowers ended up in my dream even before I knew of her kind deed. Maybe Pap was trying to tell me there’s lots of goodness left in this ole world even though he’s gone from it and I miss him so that sometimes I think I can’t bear it or maybe I was reminding my ownself of the goodness of folks like Sam Ensley and a little girl I don’t even know who lives down the road.

Tipper

 

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17 Comments

  1. I’m a dreamer, too, but I don’t think I’ve ever had one quite as interesting as yours, Tipper! You tell it so well that I can picture every scene! My favorite dream is a very simple, short one that I had a few years after my father died. I dreamed I went home to Texas, and when I arrived at my parents’ house, Daddy was sitting on the front porch playing a guitar and singing! To my knowledge, Daddy never so much as laid a finger on any musical instrument in his entire life, and I never knew him to sing either, so it was very sweet to see.

  2. I remember a dream I had when I was 3 or 4 years old. I was in bed with the measles. I had a high fever is why I was in bed in the middle of the day. As I was laying there I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye. When I turned and looking at the wall I saw sewing needles. Not machine needles but hand sewing needles. I could see the eyes in the needles. I don’t remember any thread or any hands but the needles were moving up and down. As they moved they would get bigger and smaller. The eyes got bigger and smaller too. I remember watching them for a while, then nothing.
    I can picture those needles in my head now as vividly as when I dreamed them. My dream is well over 60 years old. Why do I remember something that clearly, for that long? I don’t know. Did the fever burn the dream into my head permanently? I don’t know. I do know it is still there as if it happened only yesterday.
    I often have dreams I can recall after I wake up. I rarely recount my dreams to others. My dreams are filled with sounds, colors and actions but there are no words. Nobody speaks to me nor I to them. There seems no need. The faces I see don’t seem familiar but the people behind them are people I know or have know.
    I enjoy most of my dreams and am sad to awaken. Even the scary ones don’t bother me. It is as if I am only an observer so never in any danger. Some dreams I wish I never had to leave but I know I can’t go back, at least not yet.
    Someday though, I know I’ll go, back to the place where dreams begin.

  3. I am also a dreamer, but my ex-husband claimed he never dreamed. While we visiting my parents, he was out of bed and sitting in the living room when Mom got up at 5:30 to fix breakfast. She asked him if he was ok since he was up so early. He told her he had a dream that shook him to the core. In this non-dreamers dream, he heard the doorbell ring and went to answer it to find a deliveryman holding a dozen red roses. The man handed the roses to him and said these are for you. He thought he was surely going to die and this was his sign.
    I hate having ‘bad’ dreams when I’m alone. The boogie man dreams don’t scare me. It’s the dreams where I see my kids playing under a parked semi that suddenly starts that keep me up the rest of the night. My friend and I were on vacation in a foreign country two years ago and I dreamed crazy dreams every night. She never dreams and was concerned about my mental state after a few nights. I think the change of time zones and possibly the food I eat has something to do with the silly dreams I have when I travel.

  4. I don’t know how much I actually dream, but I know that I seldom remember dreaming. I have heard that most of us dream, but some don’t remember the dreams. I am one of those.

  5. Tipper,
    I love reading your words in your dreams. I have never dreamed but once, other than bears about to catch me and I woke up. But a few years after daddy died, I had a dream about Heaven and daddy and momma was there. Momma was about 30 or 35 and looked so happy, she wasn’t crippled anymore either. After we hugged alot, I asked where was the Lord. They told me I wasn’t allowed to see Him until later.
    That dream helped me alot and don’t bother me so much anymore…Ken

  6. What a wonderful story! My mother always had premonitions and sixth-sense feelings. She had Scots-Irish heritage, so I figured she had a touch of the ‘sight.’ I have strong gut feelings which I learned early on to listen to and follow, and I rarely am wrong.
    I always have had vivid dreams, but I usually can only remember bits and pieces. I remember when I had to take a medication and I felt like I was dreaming in hyper-technicolor. I always dream in color, but this was color ramped up and magnified. It could be cool, but I was not sorry when I went off the medication and went back to regular color dreams. It was pretty intense.

  7. I love the story of Joseph he not only dreamed but could understand them with Gods help and explained others dreams, if I recall correctly.

  8. I do not dream, at least to remember, but every now and then. My maternal grandmother was reportedly ‘fey’ and dreamed of future events that subsequently happened. My Mom also did that but rarely, or maybe she just didn’t always say.
    I have had a variation of the same dream three times. I am waiting for it to come true. In two of those dreams I see a country church sitting ‘longways’ with the road. In the third dream I am climbing the hill behind the church through a steep pasture covered in broomsedge. I don’t look back but I know where I am without looking.
    As far as I can recall, I have never seen that particular church. I am mystified as to why I dreamed it, especially three times. A real oddity about each of the three dreams is that, on recall, I ‘remember’ more detail than I saw in my dream. How can that be?
    When we changed the windows in our house I gave them to an artist who paints on windows. In return, she painted a picture of the church from a sketch I made. I believe I will find that church someday but to what end I have no idea.

  9. Tipper, we were always told that was the “end of our dream.” Usually this would involve a dream that was very vivid and seemed to carry with it some type of meaning. Sometimes it would stay with us and we would share. Some connect dreams with such things as superstition or just things weighing on the mind. My personal opinion is that God gave us dreams for a reason, and they fulfill a basic role in our lives. Many has been the time I have dreamed some memorable dream only to have something connected happen shortly thereafter. Either myself or somebody would say, “That is the end of your dream.”
    The cemetery is beautiful, and it is so very important to have a place to go to remember our loved ones. I still must go to where my Dad and sister were laid to rest. As I walk among the markers of many relatives, my problems seem to dim. It seems for me the best place to go when my mind is wrestling with some overwhelming problem. I can go there easily as it is only about a mile from my home.. I don’t do this often, but a prayer and a visit give me more perspective on any situation.

  10. I believe God allows our loved ones who have passed over to speak to us through dreams. I know he has done so with me and my dad. It was only once but it was a much needed answer that kept worrying me after the passing of my dad. I believe God is constantly at work on our behalf.
    My mom was very superstitious about things being a sign of something to come. She was a vivid dreamer as well.
    I’ve heard her say many times to one of us to not do something or to not go somewhere because she had had a dream. I never discounted the fact that she had those feelings.

  11. What a sweet dream, Tip. I like the yellow flowers, they’re bright like sunshine!
    I don’t dream a lot, at least I don’t remember many dreams. Dreams can be very elusive, I try to think about them before they slip away. I can always find some pieces from my dream that were a part of my every day life but my mind, while I was sleeping, seems to put the pieces together in an entirely different pattern from the way they happened in my waking experience. It makes me remember that my mind in vast…and likes to play!

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