There is a dream I had in my teens that I have never forgotten. Like so many dreams, it draws on actual experience. In this case, the real life event was sleeping out under the stars in a freshly mown hayfield.

When I was a kid, some of our closest family friends were cattle ranchers. They had kids my age and kid-friendly horses. I lived for the days we would visit them, and happily while I was growing up, we spent a lot of time together and had lots of horseback adventures.

One summer, we kids and our parents spread a large tarp out in the hay field beside their big wooden barn. We lined up our sleeping bags on it like so many caterpillars for the special purpose of catching an August meteor shower, I suppose it must have been the Perseids. It was a warm night for the mountain valley we lived in, but that still meant fairly chilly once the sun went down and sleeping bags were zipped up to chins.

Far from town or neighbor’s lights, we had a truly dark night sky to see the shooting stars. The milky way glowed overhead as we watched the intermittent meteors streaking for as long as possible before eyes got heavy and drifting off to sleep. The coziness and delight I felt under the enormous night sky, snugged in between loved ones, has never faded in my memory.

In this dream, it is the same experience: the dark green tarp, the row of sleeping bags shoulder to shoulder, the bright stars and night insects singing. The rustling noises of people in their sleeping bags, the crinkling of the tarp under us. Now everyone is asleep except for me. I see an extremely bright shooting star and nearby I hear a low but definite thump.

I’m gripped by curiosity and I sit up in my sleeping bag, sliding my knees toward my chest and wriggling out. I stand up in the starlight and walk barefoot on the soft dewy grass, toward where I heard the thump. And then I see it. A smooth, oval stone, dark grey and slighly sparkling. I pick it up, gingerly at first. It is cold and very dense, has strange heaviness for its size. I turn it over, and on the other side is an engraving of a running horse. My heart soars with the indescribable feeling of being exactly where you are supposed to be at the exact time you are supposed to be there. The weight of the dark meteor in my hand and the image of the horse send a thrill to my bones, a sudden confidence.

And then I woke up.

It was probably the silly dream of a teen girl, one who liked horses a little more than she liked boys, but I’ve remembered it for 30 something years and it still brings me a warm feeling.

That dream is like the small greeting card that I bought for myself when I was 18, and still have.  It’s a black and white photo of a woman with loose curly hair, her eyes closed, her expression peaceful. On the front of the card it says, “When she closed her eyes, she could hear her own voice.” And on the inside of the card it says, “And it told her she was on the verge of something big.”

I’ve kept that card through college, through relationships, through moving states, moving across the country. It’s comforting, inspiring, private. What might you be on the verge of? It’s unknown, but you need to press on. You’re the caretaker of your young self’s dreams.

Photo: Tara Jelenic