It’s always a precarious thing to wade back into our memories.

When time passes and life batters us by waves of experiences, it’s easy to lose clarity about the things that have happened to us- especially those that happened long ago from where we are now. What we cannot remember clearly, we forget. And yet, there are those experiences in our pasts that return to us so quickly and clearly when we recall them that it is like they happened yesterday.

Why do some memories stay with us in such clarity and vividness? That is a good question, considering there are also those memories of experiences we have faced that we have buried deep within ourselves, locking them away with the hopes that they might never resurface so that we won’t have to face them.

Often, lucid memories are psychic signposts of experiences that impacted us deeply- so significantly, in fact, that they altered the course of our life by veering us several degrees here or there, so that the whole direction of our existence changed.

Still, reflecting on our memories (or a lack of them) gives us insight into how we developed our definition and understanding of love, and also our capability to give and to receive it. To love at all is to be in relationship. And beginning early in life, we formulate for ourselves what a good relationship looks like based on our experiences within our small sphere of existence, with a small huddle of people.

—

When I stop and reflect, I am one of those who does not have a lot of clear memories from childhood. I don’t know why, but I am also one who does not remember a lot of events in my adult life, either.

Still, I do have a few clear memories from childhood that have stayed with me- and one of the earliest and most significant of these was not an experience.

When I was somewhere around four or five, I had a dream that burned itself into my mind and heart, and then stayed with me as I moved on into life. It was a short dream, but vivid enough to scare me. In many ways, this early dream suggested the deep conflict of character that would embed itself into my life, affecting me to this day The dream either impacted or expressed my nascent view of sexuality and the vulnerability of women. I call it a dream, but it is also my first recollection of a nightmare.

—

What I remember is standing in line at a checkout lane at Piggly Wiggly holding my father’s hand, and slowly being pulled forward as customers finished purchases ahead of us. I remember that it must have been fall in the dream because people were wearing jackets and coats in the store, and the cold light of a falling sun tinted the storefront glass panes with a dull orange light under the darkening sky.

As we approached the checkout counter, I was pulled forward and set right in front of a magazine rack, and it was then I saw the image that scared me.

For whatever reason, the magazine at eye level in my dream was a New Mexico magazine, which is not abnormal to find in a New Mexico grocery store- except that the image on the cover was startling and graphic, especially being in a little kid’s mind.

Standing on the cover in front of a dark thatch of trees with gnarly limbs extended and grasping was a tall pretty ashen skinned woman with black hair in a black dress. Except that the dress was tattered all around her, and leering at her from the foreground were the profiles and shadows of a slew of snakes and demons and fang-bearing wolves. One of the wolves was ripping a chunk of her skirt off from the hem. Flames danced at the base of the image, under the shadow throng of beasts. And wrapped around the woman’s visible feet was a thick tangle of chains binding her. The woman, with one dress sleeve torn off, clutched at her half-exposed chest with two crossed arms. And down her terror-filled face rolled gigantic tears from her eyes.

I remember standing in front of that picture, staring at the helpless woman for an immeasurable amount of time, trapped in disbelief and confusion. I stared at her eyes which cried and the chains that held her and at the tearing claws and the sharp teeth gnashing on the beasts and the tattered dress and her hostage hands, and a blackness filled my heart as if an evil spirit circled me, and I began to cry. And I couldn’t move or get away. And I was terrified.

And then I woke up, quaking, sobbing, and breathing quickly, my face and pillow moist from tears. And the blackness lingered over me for a time.

—

Where does a child assemble such thoughts? How does a 4 or 5 year-old sense the horror and humiliation that lies in a picture crafted for a dream? And where did the image come from, if a child understands little about sexuality and violence and theological motifs? And what does such a dream say about the mind of a boy processing his life, with such symbols and suggestions.

I dreamed that dream once when I was four or five. And yet, it still rises in my mind, and still startles me. For whatever it was to me then, it has since spoken to my soul about the severe duplicity and dichotomy of my own fallen, conflicted heart.