Sanford

Sanford: The fearless guardian of my dreams.

A mysterious internal clock is somewhere within him. Like a rooster awakened by the dawn. he begins to stir just before the alarm. He stands, yawns, and stretches: a graceful feline awakening.

She told me that I talk in my sleep. All night. Sometimes just single words. Sometimes full sentences. Sometimes my head jerks from side to side like someone possessed by evil spirits.

Near the end she told me that she nearly killed herself. It was the time that I found her unresponsive, lying across the end of the bed, fully clothed. “No. it was not the flu.” She said.

She told me that she considered killing me in my sleep instead. To put me out of misery. A “mercy killing” she called it. I didn’t argue. I didn't try to explain the source of my dreams. It would only make matters worse, I've decided.

"Welcome home soldier! Leave your war at the door." I would if I could.

My dreams are like kaleidoscopes.

They’re a twisted collage of memories and fantasies all playing at once.

Sometimes he’s there.

No. Always he’s there.

Sunniest day or darkest night.

On one particular night the dream cleared. The fog lifted. All of my senses were with me. The familiar smell: stale beer and unknown spices. I walked through the familiar door, running my finger over the texture, those names carved deep into the door in my soul.

It’s likely I’ll leave in the morning, but they’ll never come home.

I slam the heavy door closed on the foreign voices and music. I found the room just as I had left it years ago.

Amazing!

I turned. A figure sat in her chair. Was that her thin, straight hair blowing gently in the breeze? “A secret for you” she used to whisper in perfect English in those moments of sanctuary. “A secret for you” she whispered as I closed my eyes and leaned close and breathed deeply the scent of lilac and vanilla. “A secret for you” barely audible as I leaned into her gentle embrace. “A secret for you” he said loud in my ear, his knife at my throat.

No matter where I am, Sanford finds me.

Most nights I am dissected into countless fragments of my darkest self. He reassembles those shards of my fractured subconscious, sauntering silently and powerfully through the desolate dreamscape.

Sanford is always the fiercest of tigers. His muscles are steel cables rippling beneath the fur. I am just a remnant. I’m a barely recognizable shell of a human being, placed in his care.

Some mysterious internal clock causes him to lean in close over my sleeping form. He watches and waits for his moment, judging only by the movement of my eyes under tightly closed lids. He rears up on two legs then plunges into the pit of a darkened room, or the darker jungle. He tirelessly crosses raging rivers and frozen mountain tops, until the unexpected doorway, found only through his guidance brings me reluctantly back home.

With gentle persuasion the veil of dreams slide over, then fall off from me like the discarded clothes of the boy and man: Clothes of play, clothes of war, clothes of work, and clothes of god.

I emerge gradually back to the reality of life. Like passing from one room to another, through a heavy curtain. The brush and abrasion of the rough burlap-like material first slides, then clings to my unshaven face. Quickly, before I fully commit to that inevitable emergence back to everyday life, I glance back through a different curtain, over my right shoulder into the time-worn and gradually fading movie of the past. I catch a brief glimpse:

The view into that once beautiful garden with its fountain below. A few straggling flowers are a reminder of the glory of the courtyard’s past. A young woman and her mother once tending the garden while young children played with toy boats in the fountain’s cool spray. The water is now brown and cloudy, soiled from disuse, and littered with the cast off refuse of war: A liquor bottle floats in place of the toy boats. A deflated ghost of olive drab fabric: A hastily discarded shirt, is the courtyard’s only gardener now.

“A secret for you” she whispers.

As my face fully emerges I am reassured by the familiar: The familiar purring, and the chirp of the sparrows. As my shoulders emerge through the curtain I become aware of other sensations: The dampness of the sweat soaked pillow, the alarm clock radio playing some monotonous top 40 noise, and the hollow void of her absence.

Sampson has taken up his normal position in the center of my chest. He is kneading my chest with his paws, patiently awaiting my opening eyes. I imagine that he looks a bit like a small fur-clothed medic administering CPR to a dead man. I suddenly open my eyes wide and laugh at the look of surprise on his feline face. “Good morning Sampson” I laugh. “Meow”, he replies. I laugh again as he launches himself toward his soon to be filled dish.

Laughter is the best way to greet the new day. Wouldn’t you agree?