The drive to and from California took us through the prairie deserts of Wyoming, Utah and Nevada. When I say I loved the drive, I am invariably told, “But there’s nothing there.” That is precisely what I like about it. Nothing there–no malls, no crowds, no top volume noise, salespitches, partisan anger. Just the two of us, driving75 mph, scarcely stopping, switching drivers at rest stops, some of which feature bison herds and picnic tables, listening to Mozart, a book or each other.
I dreamed during the trip that I entered a museum where new Chagall paintings were supposedly on display. When I entered the room, however, there were no Chagalls on the walls. I asked the curator if I might view them. He rolled out two canvasses. One was all “Chagall blue,” with the fabled goat playing a violin and the entwined couple. The other was all golds, browns and tans. I realized Chagall had moved on to another way of painting. Then I dropped mustard on it, which burned a small hole in the canvas. Unwilling to admit what I’d done, I ran to my husband in another room.
Last night I dreamed that Alice was rubbing against my legs and purring. It struck me that I was the canvasses in the earlier dream. The first was my ordinary life. In the second, I created the hole by putting her down, something totally new for me. I’d destroyed a piece of myself along with allowing her to go, even though there was no choice and her end was not only inevitable but beautiful and merciful. Nevertheless, it left a hole in me. Since those dreams, my mourning feels lighter.
I want to get back to blogging about my book. A recent reader said she stayed up two nights in a row because she couldn’t put it down.
