Friday, January 9, 2015

Magic memories

I had a dream that Chris and I were at a huge festival/picnic that was going on in my Aunt Shawn's yard. I was competing in a steak hoagie eating contest with my Grandpa Bertelli who left us over 8 years ago.

We were sitting on an old wooden picnic table and it was a perfect sunny summer day. The grass was thick, the sun was warm, and the breeze was perfect. Grandpa B was younger, the way I remember him when I was a little girl and he would let me dress up his hair with all of Grandma Bertelli's bobbi pins. But, his laugh and his smile were the same. Grandpa always had a little mischievous twinkle when he would lean forward with an ear to ear grin to whisper a little taunt. On the weekends I spent with them, grandpa would crawl into bed to poke and tease me until I would angrily wake up and stomp down to the kitchen. Grandma would make us polenta with butter and syrup for breakfast while Grandpa would have his fun 'poking the bear'. It was always the same play. He would try to talk to me and I would grunt my disapproval. He would smile and lean across the table at me and call me a peabrain and stick out his tongue. This, without fail, always improved my grumpy mood. We would go back and forth thinking of names to call each other. Some of his were in Italian. Some of mine were in pig Latin and he would pretend he couldn't understand my secret language just like I couldn't understand his. This would drive grandma crazy and we would both be in trouble, but we would still do it anyway.

The entire dream consisted of Grandpa and I joking, name calling and laughing and trying to eat more than the other until the end. An old classmate, Jacob, that recently passed away walked up the the table. I wasn't really friends with him in school and only saw of his passing from others on Facebook. In my dream, I was surprised that he was at the picnic since he lived out of town. He never spoke but just sat down and kept smiling. Then he started scooting over towards me and pushed me off of my bench and I woke up.

I woke up and laid in bed remembering grandpa and wondered if maybe, just maybe, I really got to visit with his soul and have one more silly moment. Did the classmate bring him to me? Was grandpa showing him the ropes and that's why he was laughing? I'm just grateful for the incredibly vivid dream and now that I've written it out I can revisit it any time I choose.

And now I am rolling over and going back to sleep with a smile and the whisper of the word peabrain still echoing in the distance. 

Me, Grandpa, and my sister Jamie. 98/99 ish on Christmas Eve.
Grandpa holding my oldest son. This would be my only child that would get the privilege of meeting him, even if it were only for 2 years.

3 comments:

  1. Awesome story, Jennie. Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Thanks. It was one of those dreams where you try to quickly fall back asleep in hopes of picking up the dream where it left off.

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  3. Thanks for sharing, Jen...may you have more sweet dreams :)

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