A meeting

A meeting

I am 38 years old, going on 90. At least that how it feels these days. My kids are 9.I work, practice and sleep. There is not any room for anything else. I wish there were but as far as feelings goes there havn´t been much feelings left to give to anyone apart from the kids. They get everything, all the love I can muster and all the hapiness they give me is sucked up in this gigantic black hole I once used to call my soul. So many things has happend lately its a miracle I ended up with me feet on the ground. A divorce, a new life in a new place and so forth. But still I can´t complain there is always those two my kids.
But all of that were going to change, and I had no idea, maybe that was for the best. I work in a store, I meet so many different people every day.
One morning this man comes in to the store Im working in. He looks vaguely familiar. He smiles politely and I help him with his problem. He tells me his name, it´s a name I have heard before but can´t remember from were. It´s quite an unusual name, but I still can´t figure it out.
He leaves the store. And I turn to the next customer. That night in my dreams I meat this man again. This time in another context. I´m both exited and rather embaressed for reasons I really can´t define. I do´t shy away from sexual fantasies or dreams but something has been triggerd by a memory and I can´t see what it is.
Days go by and the memory of the man fades away, the everyday concerns about the kids are always present, and since they are my top priority I tend to focus on them.
Two weeks go by and the man enters the store again. This time I see him coming.

There is something with the way he moves that vaugely rings a bell, but nothing comes to mind. We talk briefly. He is kind, he has kind eyes. He leaves again, but before he leaves he looks at me and ask. –Do you have a feeling that we have met before. I look at him. He smiles and says-This is not a pickup line, I really have this strange feeling that we have met but there is no recollection of such meeting as far as I can remember. I smile and nod my head. –It´s the same for me, I say. I have this uncanny feeling that we have met, I think it was a good meeting cause there are no bad vibes but as you say, I have no memory of you.
We talk some more and decide to try to understand what this means. That both of us recognise the other party but can´t remember from where.

A meeting is set, we will do lunch in 10 days time. During the next 9 days I look through my diary that I have kept over the years. Have written down names of people I have met and where, why and how. He is not on there. I´m trying to remember. I´m walking backwards in my life. Different stages different places but no name nor face seems to match. My frustrations grows and while sifting through old photos a picture of an old derelict barn gets to me. I put that aside. Thinking that it might be a clue. I keep looking. Nothing else gives me anything.

On our lunch I show the man this picture. And I ask him, does this mean anything to you. He smiles and pulls out another photo, this one is on a meadow. He asks me the same thing if his picture means anything to me. Time and place stops. I´m suddenly 4 years old again. This meadow was my home for a summer, this was the meadow behind my grandmothers summerhouse. I remember sights and smells. All the flowers and the sounds of the bees buzzing around collecting pollen, I´m feeling very happy and content. I smile and I feel the suns rays on my bare arms. When suddenly a voice enters my mind
-what happen. You went almost white, like you´ve seen a ghost. Are you ok??
Well, yes I think so. It was the strangest feeling. Did you know that that meadow is the meadow behind my grandmothers house. It was like a holy place to me when I was four years old. I had so totally forgotten about that summer and that meadow. But why do you have a picture of that meadow. What does it mean to you? “ Well, he says, I came by it a couple of years ago and felt for some reason that it had a special meaning for me. I have never figured it out why but I´we always thought to myself that it will solve itself one day, and since you are sort of an enigma to me to I was hoping that the two of you had something to do with each other.

I looked at him and smiled. “It was my whole world and I have never been as happy anywhere else in the world as I was there”.
“ What about the picture I showed you”, I asked.
He looked at me with a strange smile “ That barn was my playground for several years until we moved. How come you have a picture of it.?
Well, I said I can´t even remember seeing it but everywhere I go I always bring my camera.
So I must have taken the picture, but I can´t really tell you when.
We kept on talking. I realised my lunch break was almost over and that I had to hurry back to work. We promised each other to keep in touch and to continue to try to remember or rather to figure out why there was this feeling of recognition
.
After work I went home. I spent some time doing homework with my kids and made them supper. We talked and we laughed for a while, then it was time for the to hit the sack. My daughter looked at me and said “ mom, you look happier today then you have done for quite a while, what happen” “well, I said when I understand it myself I will tell you but right now I´m glad but confused. During my yoga that night it finally hits me. He must be the man I dreamt about when growing up. He had a strange name. It was nothing like I´we ever heard before. He were according to my dream help me and rescue me. A child´s dream. But it was a lead. Not that I could tell a strange man about my dreams as a child or could I. I decided to sleep on my decision whether to tell him or not. My dreams told me to tell him and for some reason that it was important that he was told. I wasn´t really sure why it was so important but when I came to work I called him to set up a new lunch meeting. I´we told him that I had something that I wanted to tell him. He sounded surprised because he was just on his way over to see me because he had something on his mind. We laughed and decided to meet at the coffee shop next to my store.
I felt very embarrassed when I saw him sitting there waiting for me. Was I actually going to tell this stranger about my childhood dream. But then I thought of that dream that I had that night and decided to go with it.
I waved to him, went to the bar and bought myself a coffee. I sat down next to him and let out a sigh. He looked strangely at me. “Why such a sigh?” he asked. “Well it´s to easy to tell you what I´m going to tell you. You see, I have had an revelation, of sorts. The reason why you are familiar to me is that when I grew up I dreamt of you. You were supposed to rescue me from something somehow. I felt myself blush. It became very quite. I felt like an utter fool. I wanted to leave right there and then.
I grabbed my arm. “Please, stay, the reason why I became so quite is that I dreamt of you tonight. I never, ever remember my dreams when I wake up but this was crystal clear. I have something that you need. You need to see your doctor. That is all I know, but it seemed to be very urgent.
I was in a shock. I didn´t have a clue of what he was talking about. I was fit as a fiddle. I had never been sick in my life apart from one time when I was very young and had to be hospitalised for two weeks for a strange kind of headache that what ever kind of drug they gave me didn´t stop. After two weeks it stopped and I had since then never felt anything not even the slightest headache.
But he scared me, big time so I called my doctor or rather the family physician. He sounded very surprised but agreed to see me the same day.

We went there together. I told the doctor why I was there. I told him that I thought that this whatever that I might have that the man would save me from might have something to do with those two weeks I was sick when I was a kid.
The doctor looked at the two of us. He shook his head, and said “ I thought that I had heard all strange stories by now but, this one, this must be a new record.” We looked at each other and the looked at the doctor. We said in unison. “ We know but please at least draw some blood see if there is anything, anything at all”.
I felt shy and scared and weird everything in one strange mixed emotion. The doctor drew some blood He told us to wait outside and that he would get back to us as soon as he could.

We smiled and left his office. We sat down in the waiting room. Then I became unconscious.
I feel to the floor. The man tried to wake me up. But nothing happen. The doctor came and I was rushed to the emergency room. When I woke up my kids were there, the man and my doctor. They all looked very tired and upset. I tried to talk but there was no sound.
The doctor said “ try not to say anything” I will try to tell you why you collapsed outside my office. I frowned. The man nodded. The doctor continued “ you were unconscious for 24 hours. They did a x-ray on your head since you hit it when you fell. What they found was an small blood vessel in your brain that had started to leak. They managed to put a stop to it but if it hadn´t been for your friend here, he patted the mans shoulder you wouldn´t be here today. He was the one who insisted on the x-ray. The emergency doctor thought it was a waste of time and money but he, the man, said that he would pay whatever the cost. So they did and they found out why you collapsed. You have been here for almost 3 weeks. We are so glad that you are awake now. We thought for a while that you wouldn´t pull through.
My kids came up to the bed they kissed me and told me that they had dreamt that everything would be ok and that they should trust the man.
I was a bit uneasy, who had informed my children, but of course our physician had told the man our address and he had gone with the man over to our house to inform my children of my condition. Since I had been out for 3 weeks my children and this man from my childhood dreams had bonded. He had told them that as far as he could see or rather feel I would come around and that it wouldn´t take all that long.
We smile at each other, knowing that we will continue to play a vital part of each others life from now on.


C

Skriven av: Charlotte