I woke up the other night from a dream that seemed so important I couldn’t go back to sleep. “I have to remember this,” I told myself.
Usually, my dreams fade before morning. Amazingly, this one did not, but groggily reflecting on the dream over a steaming cup of coffee, the rosy light of morning streaming in through the kitchen windows, my waking self wasn’t sure it was as profound as my half-sleeping self had promised.
So here’s the dream:
I was in a fancy supermarket. There were brightly colored packages of foods from all over the world, as well as wide, wicker baskets brimming with fresh fruits and vegetables. Best of all, near the checkout lanes, there were freestanding counters with artisans crafting their specialties.
As I walked past, I recognized the woman making noodles at one of the counters. I stopped to chat and she told me she’d just graduated from college. I congratulated her and asked what she planned to do now that she had her degree. She paused awkwardly. “Well,” she said, “I am probably going to keep doing this.” I started to stumble over my words, hoping I hadn’t made it awkward by implying that a degree meant she needed a better job.
“It’s OK,” she interrupted, “I love making noodles and, you know, people are always in a good mood when they come to my counter.” She lifted up the strands of dough she had just pulled from her manual pasta maker. “People come up and are excited to take good food home to their families — excited to try something delicious and fresh. I spend most of my day around people who have smiles on their faces. And that is really, really nice.”
“Wow,” I replied. “That is so great!”
And then I woke up, convinced I’d been gifted the secret to true and lasting happiness.
I believe dreams can be prophetic, perhaps because we are able to accept truths while we sleep that we won’t allow ourselves to embrace during the day.
Sometimes I think it is more magical than that. Most often though, I think it is our brains rifling through the file folders of our consciousness, arranging and rearranging according to a logic we are often not able to discern. In this case, however, I knew EXACTLY what the dream was about and why I had it.
I wrote a column back in December about the small, rundown white shed on the edge of our town property that previously contained a large scale used to weigh sheep. It doesn’t have electricity or running water, but after my daughter and I started dreaming of “The Sheep Shed Cafe,” we swept and dusted, laid down plywood over the dirt floor, repaired the broken doors and hung some solar-powered twinkle lights.
It’s still a shed, but a pretty darn fancy one. Certainly fancy enough to serve snacks to kids (or adults) heading into or out of the public library, which sits kitty-corner to the shed. So far the Sheep Shed Cafe has been open four times, and we’ve “sold out” of everything every time. (I put “sold out” in quotes as all food is pay-what/if-you-can so a fair amount is given away.)
Most of our customers are kids walking over from the library, and I’ll tell you what, every time the shed fills up with laughing, jostling youngsters who “oooohhhh” and “ahhhhhh” over whatever we are serving, I feel like life can’t get better.
Last week, the day before I had my dream, The Sheep Shed served noodles, and it was our most popular offering yet.
So, while my dream might not have been as profound as I thought it was in the middle of the night, its truth remains: If you get to do something you enjoy, for people who appreciate it, the scope doesn’t matter — chances are you are doing exactly what you are supposed to be doing, exactly where you are supposed to be doing it.
