These dreams go on when I close my eyes.
Every second of the night I live another life.
                                -- Heart

I'm a dreamer, literally and figuratively. In that figurative sense, I dream, that is hold a vision in my consciousness, of a time when my house is absolutely orderly and free of clutter, my short stories are in the current issues of Glimmer Train and Ploughshares, and I'm on my way to buy plane tickets for a writing retreat in Wyoming and a size 8 dress to wear to my daughter's high school graduation.

I have the other kind of dream, too, the kind that comes to us in sleep from the subconscious. Scientists tell us that we all dream, that dreaming is a necessary and inevitable part of the sleep cycle, but that not everyone remembers dreams. Ron claims never to remember his, but I remember mine. And not always, but sometimes, I ponder their significance and study them for clues to what my unconscious wants me to notice.

The earliest dream I remember is of furniture chasing me. I am seven and a half years old, and I share a room (and a double bed) with my four-year-old sister. On the wall opposite the bed is a large armoire that we call "the toy chest." It has double doors, and the shelves behind the doors are filled with our dolls and books and games. In my dream the cabriole legs of the toy chest become feet, the scrolled top something of a face with flowing hair, and the piece runs after me, the doors flapping open. When I turn to look at how close it might be, I see behind the doors not my familiar playthings but a cavernous yawning emptiness.

Although I have a Jungian perspective on dreams, I don't rely on any standard set of interpretations of dream symbols, whether coming from serious psychologists or folklore. I've been trained to ask certain questions of my dreams, especially if they are so vivid that I carry their substance with me into my waking life. I would suspect that since I've remembered this dream (which I perceive as having had repeatedly during that time) for forty-seven years, it must have some significance. Are there people in the dream? Are they of the same sex or the opposite sex? Are they people you already know or are they strangers? How can each element of the dream represent a piece of yourself or of your conscious life?

I can say with certainty now that those months when I had the furniture dream were a time of stress for me. We had moved from the only home I'd known to larger quarters. In the old house my sister had occupied a crib in my parents' room and I shared a bed with my grandmother down the hall. Now my grandmother had her own room, my parents had theirs, and my sister and I had "the middle room." My parents had bought the furniture in it from the previous owners, including the armoire.

So I'm in a new house, with new sleeping arrangements, and furniture I am unaccustomed to. I've had to change schools, and we belong to a different Catholic parish now, so I won't be allowed to join the old parish's Brownie troop with my best friend Barbie. I've experienced this move as a profound loss of everything that is familiar and sacred to me -- my school, my friends, the huge trees that overhang the porch, the stone wall I like to pretend is a tightrope. But my parents are excited about the move. They own their home now instead of renting the back part of a dilapidated old mansion. I think I've tried to express my feelings (I am famous for having wailed about leaving "the big trees and the grass") but I doubt that anyone's thought to give me some Mr. Rogers-type listening and reassurance. In the wisdom I have now, I can see that the cupboard that is chasing me, ready to snatch me into its cavernous hollow, is a symbol of my shattered equilibrium.

In my early twenties I had about a six-week period where I dreamed repeatedly that I was in some kind of a car accident. I was always the passenger, and sometimes the car was green (my own car was maroon) and sometimes it seemed yellow (I was riding a school bus every Wednesday as advisor to the high school debate team). After a while the dream just swirled with colors, with half-formed faces, with cacophonous keening. Sometimes there was a road sign visible -- 13th Street. I began having the dream three or four times a night, waking with a shudder upon what seemed to be an impact, and I became reluctant to go to sleep.

And then a young man I was dating casually, with whom I had not managed to connect for a particular weekend in November, died, alone late at night, when his green sports car was hit by a truck at the 13th Street exit of I-83.

I never had the dream again, but I never drive by there without thinking of it, and will never use that exit unless absolutely necessary.

Despite these memorable experiences with what are surely nightmares, I have never been afraid of my dreams. I've even undertaken formal study of my dreams under the tutelage of a former pastor. I was in a group that tested the prototype for his "dream retreat weekends," and I've gone on two such trips with him. The weekend begins on Friday evening, where we participate in certain meditational exercises designed to incubate dreams. We're given readings, prayer prompts, scenarios for visualizations while awake that might result in dreams which address our current concerns. We meet privately with him twice to process the dreams' content.

The retreats are always held at the Jesuit Novitiate in Wernersville where I am a frequent guest. I am thoroughly at home there among spirits (some of whose remains are in the neighboring German Reformed cemetery) I know are friendly.

On one such weekend I had spent the morning walking, meditating, and writing. I had no particular pressing personal issue, just an ongoing interest in what Frederick Buechner calls "listening to your life." After lunch I lay down for a nap.

I dreamed about my neighbor's mother. It was one of those dreams where I'm not actually in the dream, I'm watching it as if it were a movie. I saw Mrs. Cordova walking in a garden. She was alone, and seemed to be having a peaceful time of solitude. She was dressed in colorful loose clothes that moved with her. Her silvery hair streamed out behind her in the breeze.

I laughed when I awoke. A veteran dream-reader shouldn't have too much trouble with this! Although I hadn't seen Mrs. Cordova in a while (she lives about two hours south us), I had talked to her daughter out on the driveway for about a half hour before I left for the retreat. They are both lovely women, physically and in their personalities. I knew that Mrs. Cordova, who is in her late sixties, has been a frequent guest at the novitiate throughout her life, which included raising ten children.

I thought about what I admire both in Mrs. Cordova and in my neighbor -- their outgoing personalities, their thoughtfulness, their care of my daughter when she visits the house next door. I thought about how fortunate I am to have neighbors whose values I share, whose children are good companions for my child.

I was still pondering these things when I decided to go sit on the porch. I walked down the long hall to the center of the building and turned the corner into the hall that leads to the front door. And there, in front of the bulletin board, stood Mrs. Cordova.

Do I have to tell you I was startled? "Oh my!" I cried. She turned to me. "Hello, Margaret," she said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to see me in the hallway of the Novitiate. She told me she had experienced a call to undertake a certain kind of spiritual training and was attending a private retreat with her spiritual director to discern her response. We talked briefly and then went our separate ways.

At our group meeting that night, I was the only one to report that one of her dream figures had actually manifested in the flesh.

I haven't paid attention to my dreams lately, and I'm wondering if it's because I haven't been having them or because I haven't been paying enough attention to the unconscious, spiritual elements of my life. It's time to get back to where I once belonged. Something tells me that this writing I've done will serve as some dream incubation.