but, this weird old guy tom petty keeps talking about running down a dream and going "woo-hoo, woo-hoo" so i'm going to tell you about the dream i keep having. woo-hoo...woo-hoo......
.......woo-hoo.........
mom finally came home last night, after being gone almost a week. i had to go downstairs so mom and tony could talk, and they got into a big fight. there was yelling, but i didn't really hear what they said. mom said tony had to leave, and he did. mom called dad right after, and dad is going to pick me up early this week. sometimes, dad says he'll have to call mom on sunday to see if me and my sister are going to stay with him for the week or not, but we always go back. dad has to give mom a lot of money every month, and he sometimes tells her he won't give it to her if she's not there, and says he'd rather we stay with him, instead, so he won't have to give her any money. i think that's why mom always comes home, in the end - she has to make sure she's there, so that dad has to give her the money. i remember when i was really little, before dad moved out, and they used to always argue about money then, too. so, i'm used to them always arguing about money. dad sometimes talks about the day, in the future, where we can stay with him, and he won't have to give her any money any more. i think there are pros and cons of staying with mom and pros and cons of staying with dad.
but, i fell asleep early because i had to stay downstairs, and i had this dream i keep having. i think that to understand the dream i have to talk a little about nana, first.
nana doesn't come over as much anymore, but nana used to always come over during the week because mom had to go to meetings, to stop her from getting sick. remember i talked about how she got sick? well, the meetings were supposed to stop her from getting sick, but i don't think it worked as well as it was supposed to because she got sick, anyways. nana, though, would come over when mom was at the meeting and we used to always go out in the forest behind the field in the backyard and pick raspberries. nana was from manitoba, so she used to pick raspberries when she was little. i think there's just lots of fields and lots of forests in manitoba, so there's lots of raspberries. we used to pick flowers in the field, too. nana said i was lucky to have a giant field like that in my backyard, and i think she was right. the big field is longer than the whole row of houses and has soccer posts at either side. behind that is a baseball diamond and behind that is a hockey rink, in the winter. so, it's a big big field. behind the field are trees that go into the greenbelt, and that's where the raspberries and the flowers are.
so, i used to go out to the field with nana to pick flowers and raspberries back when i was really little. not before i went to school, but before i was in grade one.
then, one day, last summer, dad took me to the baseball diamond and there were all these other kids there, which i didn't expect. we used to go sometimes and play catch, and he would lob balls at me to swing at, but i'd never seen all these kids there before. dad said i needed to go out in the field on the left side and wait by myself for the ball to come, after somebody hit it. then, when the ball showed up, i'd have to throw it back to where the kid was running to. i didn't know why, but i said ok.
when i was out in the field, though, it was just like i was picking flowers with nana. i wondered if there might be raspberries, so i wandered off looking for them. i didn't find any raspberries, but i found some daisies and some dandelions and picked them up out of the field as i found them, running around from place to place, all over the field. it wasn't long before i had a little bouquet in my hands. i was so absorbed in the act of searching for flowers that i didn't even notice the baseball roll by me.
before i could look around and see what was happening, dad had already come out of nowhere, had swooped me up with one arm and was bringing me directly to the car. he didn't say anything, but i felt something in his wooden grip that i hadn't felt before, a feeling of shame and disappointment. i didn't completely understand it then, but i've come to realize that he was very upset that i was looking for flowers instead of focusing on the baseball. he never really explained that to me, though.
for some reason, i keep dreaming about this over and over again. specifically, i dream about the non-verbal expression from dad, and the feeling i felt, at the moment that he swooped me up out of the field. it seems to have left me unsettled, somehow. i think i'm struggling to fully understand, and dreaming about it over and over to give myself the repeated opportunity to understand it. what exactly was i feeling in dad's arms at that time? what was so upsetting? and, why was throwing the baseball so much more important to him than picking flowers?
dad then silently drove me back to mom's and dropped me off a little bit early. neither of us said anything during the drive, but there was a strange tension in the car. finally, we get to mom's, and he walks me to the door and, before he leaves, promises he'll never make me stand out in a field, alone, by myself, ever again. and, he never has.
i spent this week inside reading like the doctor said. i read something called the complete asimov, volume one, which is another book nana gave me. these were short stories like the first one and they were about all kinds of things. as before, i liked the ones that had ideas and didn't really like the ones that were just stories. i think that's probably true about this isaac asimov, in general. i actually have more isaac asimov from nana, but i'm going to dad's in the morning, so i won't get to them until next week.
and, then i have to go to a new school on an army base in september because it has a really big field. but, there's a big field in my backyard. i think i agree with dad that it's silly, but i'd might as well make the best of it.
