Don’t Leave Your Dreams on a Notepad For Someone Else to Find

His muddy boots were a terrible mirror. Heavy steal toes, clomping up the stairs on the back porch.

Tired, weary, covered with cement.

The earth clung to my dad.

And when he got home, I found joy in taking my tiny hands to help him unravel his laces, loosen those loops, and pull off his boots…

So the weary weight his shoulders were carrying, could rest a bit, after a long days work.

He sat in his grandmother’s chair, under the roof he’d worked so hard to provide for…

Then, I pulled and pulled, never strong enough on my own to disconnect those seemingly thousand pounds boots he was wearing.

So, he helped. He always helped.

Aftewards, he patted me on the head as a “thank you” once his filthy white socks were revealed.

The crater in his face, his dimple, shone towards me, as if saying, “I see you. Don’t worry. I am here now.”

Strength fell not in words. It came with thick palms, wrinkled and callosed hands that looked more like a man twice his age…

He often picked up his dinner fork and didn’t say a thing. He didn’t need to.

Words and steal-like character didn’t always go hand-in-hand. And what I have found in my lifetime is…

Often the more words people have, the weaker they are.

As a little girl, I remember stories.

Stories of waterslides built off our second story, winding their way down to a pool. Or dreams of leaving suburbia and purchasing a campground, so my parents could meet all kinds of people.

They loved to travel. And they both loved people.

I remember the shoreline. Barely old enough to walk.

And the dark-skinned giant wearing nothing but cutoffs. His eyes came alive around water.

His yellow boat a chance for freedom. The wind an invitation to better days, riding summers weather.

I was mesmerized by this man.

The one who slowly died as his hands, still layered in thickened skin from callouses, finally rested after paying for our family’s basic needs.

His breath drifted out of him, along with dreams…

Dreams he exchanged for layers of practicality, need-to’s and have-to’s.

Today, my childhood home has a gapping hole.

Like an elephant in the room, who left his weight in memories and presence. The silence there is deafening.

Some escape. They run and leave, disappear or forget, because let’s face it, it’s easier to NOT remember…

Easier to remain blind instead of seeing, tasting and smelling the presence of a man who was your everything.

I ache for his white t-shirts today.

The ones my mom used to dress me in as a little girl. His clean, aftershaved face. Those puffy pillow ears I used to play with as a toddler before the age of Kindergarten.

There is no way to take grief and role it up in a ball, displace it, or erase it, if you want to live at all.

The only way to tackle grief is through; boldly, bravely, painful. True.

A trailer with a frame sits in the back of my father’s property. It was a project, a side-act, just another dream that was left with beams, and a frame….

Empty. Unfinished.

It’s funny because things can have value, until you don’t need them. Dreams can lie dormant and no one else can see them, until it is too late.

He told my husband only. Not his wife. Not his children. Just the man I married.

He had watched about tiny houses, and envisioned one for himself.

Slowly, methodically; like a turtle counting the costs; my dad collected, saved, planned and dreamed for the project that would be his last…

A fully done tiny house.

But then, numbers for blood work started dropping. Retired feet began slowing, coming up that second story deck.

Hands, no longer covered in concrete, were getting weaker and wearier from all the years he labored, to make a way for us.

He chose to be a dad, instead of following his dreams.

His half-done, tiny house sits. 

$6000.00

My mom was cleaning my dad’s bedroom shortly after he died. $6000.00 is how much she found tucked away, saved, year after year after year.

No one knew what it was for. But then I mentioned it to my husband. “He was saving that to build his tiny house. Your Father told me.”

My Father had shared his dream with my husband. He had poured out his heart to the man I wed. Although married in, my dad took him under his wing and treated him as flesh and blood.

And when someone dies, the biological family often gets honor. But what about the committed, the faithful, the never dishonoring and staying by your side kind of people?

Aren’t they family just as much as those tied in by blood?

This money tucked away, no one thought much of it.

Then today.

The man with dreams, who sailed and sped old cars, like his 36′; the one who traveled and always loved an impromptu adventure…had another secret.

There, under pages in his bedroom, was a sketch of his tiny house; the one he had framed and prepared for, saved and had visions of…

Before the cancer struck.

Stove top, couch, sink and shower. Not one detail was missing. A door, windows, measurements and dreams of expanding, creating, designing and building what he had seen on t.v.

The thing about life is, you never know when this world will take you. When your very perfect plans will be drown out by this ugly world that rises up to snatch you.

And all you thought you are can come tumbling down and you just won’t realize it, until it is too late.

I stared at that paper. That notebook of dreams. The designs my dad had created.

At seventy-seven, some say, “Quit dreaming”. Others might say live practical and complacent.

But, I see my face in the pen I envisioned dusting across those pages.

I see my Father come alive, though cancer ran him ragged and the hands of simple living, stripped him from his dreams.

I lay awake, thinking tonight. Lay awake in the reality that…

The devil doesn’t have to kill you…He just has to make you stop dreaming.

My Daddy dreamed.

He sketched and saved, planned and gave only one person the keys to his hopes and dreams.

Was he afraid the cynics would rob him?

Why do we leave our dreams abandoned on yellow notebook paper?

Why do we toss away our hopes for practicality and marytdom, dusty boots, man-made castles that can never go with us…When our bodies die?

I always told my son, “I would rather have you live on a beach without anything and be happy, than to have you chase after things that don’t matter.”

Things are things. Stuff is junk that can’t be taken with us, when our bodies fail us.

What are your dreams today? What are mine? How much time will we waist living a life that gets crippled by us wanting to be like the Jones’.

I have dreams. Some dreams I have shared. But like my dad, many dreams no one has yet heard of.

I never thought I was like my dad, but I am.

I am a dreamer. Same dimple. Same quiet countenance that isn’t easily entangled with the pettiness of other people, the fleeting promises of this world.

And I too have a pad, written with ideas…

Hopes. Dreams. Seeds of promises, given to me by my Creator.

But will they die? Will they fade with hard work, practicality and time? Will anyone uncover the real me?

Will they ever be able to uncover, the real you?

Will duty and obligations drown our joy until we have nothing left to give?

Will we have pieces of paper left with missed dreams, others will find when we die?

We don’t know when the end will come…

So, what if we rise up, get out our notebooks and grab ahold of our dreams, regardless of who might try to stop us.

We only have one life. How will we live it?

I am done with layered cement, heavy boots, tired muscles forcing myself to just “work harder”.

It’s time to dream again. Will you also start dreaming too?