I adopted a son in my dream and I didn’t buy him $100 cargo shorts
Two nights ago I had a dream I adopted a little Black boy. He seemed to be between 7–10 years old or so. The age was unclear perhaps, but with certainty it can be declared I loved him, in the ephemeral landscape that I chanced upon meeting him.
My son was very expensive and it didn’t take me too long to deduce this. I stood in front of him, gaze affixed, as my heart smiled knowing he existed and he himself knowing he existed told me all that I needed to know. My heart smiled even while he relayed to me a laundry list of material items that he wanted that I could not afford.
He wanted me to purchase him very expensive sneakers, some other haute decorum, and most memorable of all, “$100 cargo shorts.” Now, I hate cargo shorts. I think they are a passé gesture of a time I hope we never return to, in dream or in wake. But I loved my son and there was a warring in my heart as I contemplated how I ought to respond. We had bills to pay and it was winter, so I saw absolutely no utility in purchasing $100 cargo shorts that he’d not even be able to wear until the next season.
Obviously, my disdain for the aesthetics of cargo shorts didn’t drive any sentiment for me because I didn’t give my son a definitive answer. I just stood, gaze affixed, listening to him. I wanted to give him the space to tell me what he needed. My dream consciousness didn’t grapple with the why of need because I think love does that sometimes. My judgement wasn’t marred in anyway, but dream space is, perhaps, limited and in wake I’ve held true to the belief saying for that which you love, you pivot true attention. So, I gave my son space to vision, even if outside of the material for which I’d be able to provide in the immediacy of our encounter. Because our encounter was fleeting, what right did I have to tell him he couldn’t long for something — it’d perhaps be stifling to limit envisaging to the grasp of an ad hoc dreamer.
When he finished his list he smiled at me, in the way that we do when we ask an ostensibly unreasonable request to an incongruent proxy. You know, a proxy that deeply desires to be magnanimous while accepting that life often doesn’t allow it to will love into fruition, how it’d so desire to express it. But he smiled and I stood, gazed affixed, and loved my son. And now I sit here reflecting on the lessons of stewardship that I could have imparted. I hear the voice of Baldwin yelling to me, so, I am forced to be an optimist. Because perhaps he knew my soul had already pivoted, somewhere, reflecting on how I’d ask the electric company to grant forbearance, so I could purchase those shorts.
