The Lesson

(And Now Let Us Make Our Way Home)

— Dreams, she said, are easily explained by stupid people. They are easily dismissed. They are meaningless. Nothing can be based on them — no predictions, no hopes. No one has any dreams that have anything to do particularly with him or her. A dream is simply images, as though one were traveling aimlessly by car not on a street but through a series of rooms, and one sees things, looking there out the window. But they are useless and one shouldn’t pay attention.

When Stan looked like he wanted to object, she continued.

— At least, this is one view. Another view is that dreams may be explained easily (again, easily) with the use of certain books. This group of people would say that a dictionary of some sort (made by some truly brilliant person) will give you exact definitions for anything you might encounter in the dream world. Through the use of a book of this sort, you can tell what your dream means, and what its significance is in your life. There are other books that will tell you that dreams are the way that higher beings communicate with lower beings, and in so doing, give instructions about how life is to be led.

She paused.

— Of course, I don’t agree with any of that. Do you?

Stan explained a dream to her that he had had. It took a while. When he had done, she told it back to him.

— So, she said, you were drawing for your father. He gave you paper and a pencil and told you to draw a wire. You drew a line and he said, that is a line. I want you to draw me a wire. So, you drew a line between two buildings, and drew the buildings, and then you drew someone with an umbrella about to step onto it. He took the paper and crushed it, and you felt terrified that this would make the person fall. Then, in the dream, the person fell, and you were falling, and your father was speaking to your mother, you could hear his voice. He was saying, before he was born…, but you couldn’t make out anything after that.

— That’s right, said Stan.

— Was it frightening?

— Only that the person with the umbrella, a young woman. That she would fall. And, my father. He was accusing me of something.

— One thing about dreams, said Loring. Is that we know many things, and some of them we learn from life. But others, it seems that we could not have learned them from life. Some of them we see in dreams. Do you know anything that you never learned or saw?

A bus came then and there were many red flags along the top. They were flying in the wind. People were hanging out the windows of the bus. The driver was waving. They were tourists of some kind, and seemed very happy. Stan waved to them.

Loring took his hand and led him up the hill. This time they had to pause several times, for he had grown tired. It was a long way for a boy to walk without stopping, and, of course, she was far too old to carry him.