I was in a large space that was filled with warm light. It could have been a train station or an airport terminal. It kind of reminded me of the venue where Sophia had her Bat Mitzvah celebration in Seattle. It had high ceilings and many large windows facing west towards a bay that was part of the Puget Sound. There was a deck outside beyond the windows which transitioned the interiors out to the water.
In the space, there were people I knew. Darren arrived with someone else. And then my Father arrived. It was a younger version of him, like what I remember him from when he came to watch my soccer games with my Mom. A short sleeve collared polo-type shirt tucked in to the trademark shorts that he wore, with sneakers.
Darren played soccer with me in high school and growing up. He is a year younger than me. The other connection Darren has with my father is that they are both no longer living. They both died of some form of cancer. It was unclear if they were living or dead in my dream. I do remember asking Darren how he was and I remember him not really wanting to talk about his health. We hugged in greeting. I remember trying to recall the things I knew about him besides his health, like that his oldest son was a very good soccer goalie at Boston University, but I never got to bring it up for some reason.
Where we were, there was a central table that had all of these medical scans or x-rays of the body. Instead of being made of clear plastic, they were printed on old architectural drawings, the kind you would find for old buildings built before the computer age. The paper was kind of yellowed with the the x-rays or scans the color of blueprint. It was unclear if they were scans of Darren or my Father or if they were scans of me. (Side note, my father was a doctor and I am an architect). We were all standing around the table looking at them.
I find it interesting that I had this dream the day before I was to be going into the Baltimore Longitudinal Study on Aging. The study is two days and two nights of in-patient research and testing, and it occurs every four years. Well, every four years until you turn sixty and then after that, every two years until you die. I have been participating for the last nine years (my third visit was postponed a year due to Covid) and this was my third visit. So, the Longitudinal Study essentially tracks how your body responds to aging until you die. For me, I see it as continually adding another point on the graph. The visits are reminders for me to try and maintain healthy habits in between. They are also reminders that it is one more visit closer to the last visit. The visits will end one day. This is what may have triggered my dream.
The study takes place in a hospital in Baltimore, which is where I live. It offers me two days where the only responsibility I have is to participate in every health test being asked of me. The tests include everything from gait studies to bone density scans to cognitive tests. (If you ask me kindly, I will show you the scars that look like two hole punches where they took skin biopsies.) During these two days, I do not have to work, or pickup kids from school, or cook dinner. I just have to be. During this particular visit, when I was not participating in a study, I was in my room, alone. I would read an article out of the Artforum magazine I brought, or I would read a chapter out of the book I brought, A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess. (I had not yet gotten to the part of the story where our Humble Narrator signs up for his own study, of sorts, the Reclamation Treatment that by agreeing to participate in, would reduce his prison sentence.) Or, I would just lie back in my reclining hospital chair. The reclining chair that is next to the window overlooking the Patapsco River and downtown Baltimore beyond. I would lie back in the reclining chair and close my eyes and just be. For five minutes, or fifteen minutes. How often would I do that in the middle of my busy week of work and driving and cooking? How often would I finish reading a magazine from cover to cover?
I had a thought after my visit. Not that I wish to be ill or dying, I do not wish that on anybody, but as the stresses of my new job have been building up for the last six months or so, I have thought that if I was diagnosed with a major illness, I would be off the hook for having to keep working. I will not go into the causes of the stresses of my new job. I will not go into my new job at all. I do not talk about my job regularly. It isn’t the thing that interests me most.
It is an absurd thought I know, major illness to get out of working, but realistically, I cannot quit my job. But honestly, I do not love my job. Here in lies the dilemma. This has nothing necessarily to do with my health or this dream, but it opens a window into why I may get so much joy from participating in two-days of testing, isolated from my world.
