Also Fall 2008, a few weeks after #6.

I am holding forth in professorial style; and it is certainly an informal class, the young men and women crouched or sitting on the floor, attentive looking and perhaps even interested; but as turn my head to the right ,,,

It could be 1965.

White dress with a purple dot pattern ... same blonde hair with the same center part ...

...Same smile.

Daughter? Granddaughter?

Fall 2008, seventeen years since that date. If Susan has appeared in dreams, they've gone unremembered. Now ...

Some sort of a get-together in a convention or community center. I'm standing off on the fringes, away from the cocktail crowd, when I'm grabbed in a side hug and turn my head to see who...

She looks her age.

She makes it look spectacular.

"I'm running!", she says, with that smile I remember from a Hot Shoppes lot some 39 dream-years ago. Then, not quite suiting deed to words, she strides away toward the crowd.

In both the dream and waking worlds it is January 1991, Washington, D. C, Over four waking world years later, 21 dream world years.

Mild day, a low and darkening overcast. I'm standing on the walk in front of the Chinese restaurant at Wisconsin Avenue and Chesapeake Street N. W. It's half of a duplex, probably built about the turn of the century. Stucco over wood, it like most of the buildings in the block began as a home above/shop below. Who knows how many tenants have come and gone. I remember a mom&pop grocery, a record store where I got my first 45RPM of Blowing In The Wind. The Chinese cuisine is superb. I'm just out walking, so I'm casually dressed to say the least. A-2 style leather jacket, jeans, boots that haven't seen a shine lately. Who-knows-what for a shirt.

And she's there, walking up the sidewalk toward me. We are apres-ski today, though I doubt she's ever been on skis. Light brown stocking cap, slightly darker sweater with a horizontal pattern where horizontal patterns are most noticeable, darker brown pants. A smile that should put me on notice. She's gained some weight over the years; but every ounce is right where it should be.

At once we are upstairs, which has been stripped bare. The lumber of the walls is in surprisingly good condition. In the way of dreams we do not talk, but have talked.

She has invited me to join her for dinner. On one condition...
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... A medium-classy place on the Virginia side of the river, full night now. Apparently no reservations needed, as we're in a line outside the door; both dressed as we were - except for the bedsheet remnant tied around my head as a burnoose. The condition was that I am to be a sheik. This at the height of Desert Storm, when real sheiks in real burnooses are all over the District.

She smiles her slight smile. As for me, I'm none too confident about this.

Flash forward. Apparently the maitre d' is prepared to believe that sheiks dress like slobs, as I'm watching her at the salad bar, bent forward in a way that highlights two of the reasons I'm going along with this.

Then, flash back. Outside. She with that slight smile. Me thinking that, however expertly she worked it, it looks like a bedsheet.

One mistake, one slipup; and we could be a Diplomatic Crisis.

I hope that's not what she has in mind.

"Real" World Time: September 22nd 1986, just short of nine months after I began keeping a dream diary.

I step out onto the balcony as I put on my hat, its bill as mirror-shined as my shoes - then lean against the railing and am quite happy with what I see. The men work at a steady pace, the sun is shining, the sea its best blue. We've done well these past few months.

I think of this place as New Jamestown. Like those Englishmen of yore, we're an outpost on the edge of a new continent; and are already aware we'll never fully explore it in our lifetimes. But where they huddled in crude huts in a crude stockade, we have several clapboard buildings up; and our few acres are fenced only by posts bearing two strands of wire, not barbed, which any child could crawl under; any adult step over. The few misunderstandings with the natives have been worked through with mutual good will; and even the ongoing language problem seems to be a source more of mutual amusement than annoyance.

I smile; and I'm sure that smile is noticed.

I'm Captain.

All's not quite well, though. A soldier calls to me that a man has run off into the swamp. Fortunately, on our side of the fence. The men form a skirmish line, I join them, and we start running in, I hollering in my loudest, deepest voice. This guy will fight like a cornered rat if surprised; best he knows we're coming. And it might not hurt if he thinks I've gone as crazy as he has. Then I hear, "Captain!"

I look. Two men are at the shore, something between them. One beckons, so I trot over. It's a basket; and in it is...

...a newborn baby.
***********************************
Comprehension, and some inner dialogue, come immediately on waking. As the logs are long gone, the latter is reconstructed from memory.

Blonde, no doubt.
Did I say which birthday?
"Venus Rising From The Sea" you ain't.
Moses?
A guy. Newborn, maybe; but not just born
(We exchange a few quips, the one I recall being based on a beer commercial of the day)
Let there be light!...
...No, Bud Lite!
So who am I?
That would take some telling.
I mean, what's my name?
Aren't you supposed to tell me that?
C,mon, you know it. This is Jamestown, right?
Right.
What three ships landed at Jamestown?
Let's see, ... the "Speedwell," the "Discovery," and the...
Susan Constant.

"Real" Time: September 21st 1986

Dream Time: Late summer, probably September. 1969 is "best fit" for the year.

Old Washingtonians, Dad and I ignore parades, inaugurations, demonstrations and the like; but the glimpse of this we've seen on TV, and that it's barely a mile from the house, has led us to go and see. We've become separated. No problem, it's an easy walk home.

Three by three the Cardinals march, their staffs held in front of them, vertically in their left hands; and Rome itself would provide no better backdrop than the red brick apartments along Connecticut Avenue, from about Albemarle Street to Fessenden. A light gray overcast adds a note of solemnity and, better still, breaks DC's notorious summer heat and humidity.

Where they started, where they are going and why they are marching at all are a mystery to me; but it is a magnificent spectacle.

A badly overmodulated female voice behind me. I turn, and see her on a hastily built wooden platform. She's holding the old style, large microphone close to her mouth, perhaps too close. That or her sound tech doesn't know his job. The mike, the hand and arm holding it, and the way she sways as she talks obscure the lettering on a beauty-queen style sash running from her right shoulder to left hip. The light gray dress is cut modestly, was probably bought off a rack, but very, very carefully selected. Suddenly she throws up her arm, bursts into song. Radiant joy on her face...

...and parade, Cardinals, Dad ... all forgotten as I stand and stare.
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The parade has gone by, the crowds have dispersed. We walk down the sidewalk to Albemarle Street and on across.

I can't believe she's walking with me; and the slightest bit of tension in her smile tells me she feels the same. But if we don't know what to say; we know nothing need be said. We turn off the sidewalk into the Hot Shoppes parking lot - the "tele-trays" of the '50s and early '60s are gone, I guess hippies don't "cruise the Ave[enue]" of a Friday night, or maybe the pot smell got so bad the cops ran them off - and just walk. Time, obligingly, slows down. What we'd walk in one minute seems to take two.

She's done well. Not every D. C. twentysomething does live remotes. Me? Here in 1969 I'm back from Korea, on leave before going to Fort Gordon, Georgia. I'm called "Captain" now, in many cases "Sir"; and have decided to try a third year in the Army before deciding whether it's my career.
.
There's a gully at the back of the lot. I see her sash at the bottom. "Protect The Children", it reads.

We walk on; but as we reach the far back corner of the building her face sets; and she starts walking away rapidly, towards a well-tended grove across the avenue. My heart goes to my throat.
But she puts it back.

Turning her head over her shoulder, she smiles and says, "Don't worry! You'll see me tomorrow."
The smile broadens.
"It's my birthday!"

Late August or Early September, 1965. We've known this day was coming from the start. Her college is about five miles away, mine about 1,500. We're way too far along for either of us to transfer; and hers does not have ROTC, no small consideration in these 'Nam & Draft Era days.

I wish she wouldn't take it so hard.

I'll miss this second-story walkup. It's in a converted private home, so the floor plan is unique and the furniture a mix of the landlord's castoffs and second-hand items; but she's added a few touches. Much more cozy, intimate, than a "real" apartment. I've spent part of most days and all of many nights here; and hate to see them end.

She looks at me with sheer hatred. Even when a couple of friends drop by.

One last look in the bedroom. Her jewelry box, a lovely thing of tan wood, is on her dressing table. I reach to touch it one last time.
"That's mine. I'm taking it with me."
Her words say "Do not touch." Her face says Freud was right.

Nothing to do but leave. I go out the sunporch door, down the steps to my car. Soon I'm on a street in my college town, about a mile from the campus and my rented room, looking forward to the coming year.

Episode 1

(Real World Time for Episodes 1 & 2: Summer 1986.)

June 1965, nightime, on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda, Maryland, about 3 miles from the Washington D. C. line. Paul must want to go back to DC as, a U-turn across the avenue being illegal, he turns onto a frontage road paralleling it. It's narrow, must have been put in in the Thirties, even Twenties, before cars got so wide; but it still provides a little off-avenue parking. Paul slows to 10mph or so.

A sort of brown blur. Paul hits the brake pedal hard, stopping within inches of the girl. Angry with relief, I'm out on the sidewalk to which she's already gotten back. Dark brown V-neck top, lighter slacks. Only her swaying, and a sort of puffiness to her face, show she's had at least one too many. Her smile is a mixture of "I'm sorry ...And just what are you going to do about it?...You're sorta cute."

She's lucky I'm not a cop.