I had the most odd dream this morning, and I didn’t want to wake up from it.

I dreamt that someone who had last seen me when I was in Australia, so about 5 or 6, was seeing me again, but behaving in the same way as if I were still a child. Now, this is not to say he was patronizing; not at all. No one spoke, which was a welcome change from the barrage of queries that result from aging, absences, and expectations. Accomplishments are never final; answering the question as to what you’ve done is annoying, but answering the question as to what’s next is even worse. Perhaps I’ll quell all future interrogation from family members and those adults who last encountered me 20 years ago with the answer “Oh, I think I’ll probably get hit by a bus tomorrow. Or maybe not. We’ll see.”

Returning to the dream: it was a gentle-natured redheaded man with a hat and moustache, I believe. I don’t know anyone who fits this description, but I suppose if I wanted to, I could figure out the amalgamation. He didn’t speak, and held my hand, and I think my brain was representing myself as both adult and as a child (I felt smaller but ‘myself’).

We went somewhere to watch some musicians, and I think I was back to being an adult again as I was adjusting the outputs on the bass guitar’s amplifier. Then it may have been him playing the bass. You know, those parts of dreams where it gets all fuzzy as to who’s who, etc. The bass player (yes, possibly the man) started playing something random to get the levels right, and I start ‘singing’ Hall & Oates, “You’re Makin’ My Dreams Come True” – I say ‘singing’ because I actually don’t know the words, and didn’t in the dream, either. But it was a happy music video type moment.

This was one of those dreams where the content didn’t really matter as much as the feeling I was experiencing from within the dream, and lucidly, aware of it being a dream. I had been discussing various people who had been present during brief intervals of my childhood who had fawned over me and gave me little gifts that I cherished – at the time, and still, today. A little fluffy “purse” shaped like a koala with a Canadian $2 bill, waiting to leave the airport from Australia. A spoon with little engraved pictures. Birthday cards, books, dolls, and most importantly, attention and affection. I joked with my mother that single, childless secretaries from the Embassies often took to me, “adopting” me for trips to the movies and outings. They disappeared into the ether and the pattern of loss repeated, over and over again, with other adults from whom I felt acceptance.

It was totally normal to me that I should dream about a man in this position; I had very sweet crushes on the random men who passed through our homes or stayed with us for any length of time. I remember that one had the last name “Shoemaker,” and a few pictures in the family album show him with my brothers, desperate for their own paternal substitute. That being said, there was the same sexless affection that I have for my lovely gay male friends that I had for this mystery man. The same desire to curl up and be held that I once had with my goofy psychiatrist.

It’s such a hopelessly desperate pull that it brings me to tears if I think about it for any length of time, as little as seconds. I feel helpless and completely exposed in my vulnerability. The more I look at pictures of myself as a rambunctious and playful child, the more I feel like the side of me then that was hurting for care still exists inside of me exactly as it was.

Sometimes I look exactly the same.