The Absence of True Story 4

There are rooms I remember that never were. One was eight feet off the landing between our second and third floor. Clearly, a dream door. I never actually saw the room behind it because I didn't dream I could fly, nor did it come equipped with a ladder. But the door I remember clearly. more so than any other. I remember wondering why I had never seen it before. Then I realized I had. I had seen it in other dreams and I'd see it in more. A dream in a dream is like a mirror in a mirror; it goes on and on and little new is added.

I have filled in the blanks so many times, it's the blanks I remember most. There was a giant caterpillar crossing a sidewalk. Not a large caterpillar, but a giant, a gargantuan caterpillar, a caterpillar the size of a very fat squirrel. I ran home in fear and hid. I was not Huck Finn. Now, I've run this scenario over and over in my mind for over four decades. And what I want to know is: did it happen? or was it a dream? My old brain tells me there are no such things as squirrel-sized caterpillars. And seeing them would not cause me - or so I'd like to think - to go wee wee wee all the way home. So I keep trying to convince myself that yes, it was a dream. And yet, for years after the fact there was no question whatsoever but it was real.

There was also the time, much later, when my father left. This was no trip. He up and split. He didn't leave for good, but he was gone for months, maybe a year. When he returned, we walked on eggshells so as not to send him off again. Now, for some reason unknown to me, the rest of my family does not remember this happening. One or more of us is suffering under a delusion. Sheer numbers would seem to overrule me. Another dream or collection of dreams, I suppose. And yet, I recall weeks and months going by with me trying to imagine his surroundings, his new life. More time than could fit in a few recurring dreams. Granted, time can be compressed in a dream, but can all that experience come to be imagined? Seems a stretch. And yet...