After an accidental three-hour Friday evening nap, I stumbled across Coal Miner's Daughter on some movie channel while I was eating my dinner in the middle of the night. It'd been many years since I'd seen the whole thing, and I watched most of it, although I didn't remember so much annoying banjo music in it. But hearing all those Loretta Lynn songs made me remember how I used to perform mini-concerts on the steps of our church at home when I was little, maybe three or four.
We still lived in Skedee then, right across the street from the little white clapboard Methodist church, and those front steps went just high enough that I felt like I had a commanding stage for the whole street. I probably owe a few apologies for those performances; I have no idea how many times I might have annoyed Bo and Evelyn Brown, who lived straight across the street, or Nancy, who lived in the former parsonage next door. I never saw anyone watching, so I felt free to sing my heart out. As I recall, I favored Tammy Wynette a little more than Loretta---Tammy seemed so much more coolly elegant, and she had a prettier name. There were probably a few Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Hank Williams songs thrown in. When the new house out at the elevator was still being built, I would imagine the back patio as my new stage, something of an upgrade because it looked out on an open pasture that could be filled with who knows how many star-struck fans applauding my stunning performances. With more people around to catch me there, I don't think I was as exuberant with my performances, but I do remember riding my bicycle in giant figure-eights in the pristine garage, singing "Happiest Girl in the Whole USA."
That dream of stages and stunning costumes carried me through a lot of years---far more than I care to admit. A shy kid who really didn't like to fail at things, I didn't talk about that dream much except in joking, though I know now it was pretty obvious that I craved it. It didn't really occur to me to long for any other profession, even as I learned the realities of life and survival and the long, long odds against making a name. Even when I went to college, I chose radio broadcasting as my first degree at Rogers, unwilling to walk away from that abiding love of music that has passed through several generations of my family. Only when I found that DJs make almost no money did I reluctantly decide I needed another path, and teaching opened before me with a stage far more suited to my talents than singing. The classroom turned out to be more rewarding than any dream I could have thought up for myself.
Of course, there were other dreams that came---and eventually went. Like most girls, I thought at one time I really wanted a family: marrying a farmer and having six kids seemed perfectly reasonable, a thought that now makes me infinitely grateful that God in His (or Her!) wisdom planned something else for me! I love babies, can't get enough of them, but I'd have made an impatient, self-involved mother. Marriage might be OK if I could be married only on weekends, or if I had a husband who traveled; I barely manage to take care of myself, and having to cook and clean for someone else after working all day would make me really cranky, I think. There also was the dream of being a published poet that never really got beyond several angst-ridden poems and a lot of ideas for chapbook titles. A creative writing teacher in college encouraged my talent in ways I couldn't have expected, but I was way too closed-up to ever think of sharing what seemed so incredibly personal at that time. Actually, after learning at 30 that I'd suffered life-long depression and getting that under control, I lost the desire---and much of what talent I did have---to write my best work; that made even more sense to me when I learned that 33% of America's poet laureates have suffered from bi-polar disorder. I could live in a gray world and write, or I could live in color and be happy and mostly wordless. There was no pain in making the choice I did.
These days, my dreams, the waking ones, are mostly simple, but often, still, blue-sky thinking at its most deluded. I dream of being able to wear cute shoes again, of returning to the days when I could take my feet for granted in flip-flops, flats with no arch support, and spiky heels that I could teach and walk campus in all day. Dreams of being healthy and more confident, while more within reach now, will always require hard work and vigilance on my part, which I pray for always. Then, too, there is that dream that everyone has but few find true: to be known and understood, to be the most important person in the world to someone. Some would call it being in love, but it's just love, in many varieties. I know I've been rich with it, so I try not to wish for more than my share.
Dreams are, I believe, what keep all of us going; when we run out of dreams, we run out of a will to go on. I've had the power to dream, to believe in myself enough to dream, ripped away before, and I know I don't ever want to experience it again. So I will be brave enough to keep dreaming and confess my dreams to anyone who asks, for as long as I can wring a single thread of hope out of life---and there's a lot of life left out there.
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