To Dare

There are some things you just don't talk about. Like.....dreams. You keep them tucked. There's a place, a soulful pocket, that collects such things.

Every once in a while, I'll tumble my fingers down in there. Tinker around, fondle those things. Like smoothed stones, caressed; my fingers know them by heart. Rarely do I take one out and examine it. To look at them, to pull them out, exposes me.

Exposing a dream is horrifying. To dream is to dare. Webster's says: to dare is to have the courage to try; to meet defiantly; to venture or hazard. Such words conjure up images of North Pole expeditions, Congo jungle treks, or starting life over at 57.....things way too big for me. I'm a suburban mother and grandmother for god's sake...what do I know about daring? My life has been safe. Crazy, but safe.

But....today, walking the beach, something happened. I dared. I shoved my fingers deep into that soulful pocket, felt around my familiar pebbles, and bumped into a boulder. A dream so big that it declared itself; said, this pocket can no longer contain it. And I took it out. I sat on a driftwood stump and held it in my hands - a dream that I could not have imagined for myself. A dream that is way too big for me, and yet is so true to me. And now, I've looked at it - squarely. Not quite examining it, but daring to hold it in the light. And it thrills me.....and terrifies me. A holy kind of terror - a pure and powerful existential connection that whispers, destiny.

As I stood up from my driftwood pew, I scooped up a yellowish stone from the tidal debris and set it on the stump, like an altar. My dream sits there; declared.