Recurrent Dreams of Amy

Is she symbol? Or do I need to call her?

In the past five months I have had 5 dreams about a childhood friend who lives in Maryland. We were best friends in the sixth grade and for a few years after that until our lives radically diverged when she became a Mom at the age of 16 and I headed to college prep school.

In some ways her life was likely my life, (one of the many fates I escaped), if my folks had not moved us out of rural Maryland and out to Colorado where there was a bit more for teenagers to do than drink and drive around in cars and get pregnant.

In Colorado we hiked up red hills under blue skies. We read a lot of books. There seemed to be more opportunities for females.

Amy's and my paths had split in junior high anyway when she became slightly more obsessed with boys and I became more interested in words. She still wanted to attend church but that was for Sundays. I wanted to shun church but to lie awake any night discussing the Bible and the various meanings of life that might be possible.

I recall the night our lives went different directions, or at least the night I realized it. Four of us teen girls had come back from a day at the ocean, and we were all sunburned and sandy and spent, and we lay down together width wise on the bed, our feet sticking off, and they all slept, and I lay there in a Noxzema haze, thinking about the day and the future. Amy had stayed awake with me as long as she could, and finally sweetly and drowsily asked if we could talk more in the morning.

I am not trying to say either of us was wrong or right. In many ways I do think she was the better adapted person, and you will not ever find a sweeter or more kind- hearted person.

Does she keep popping into my dreams because she needs to hear from an old friend?
Or is she symbolic for me? Is it that I kept intending to go and see her while I was on the East Coast but my illness and other people's deaths kept me from making the trip, and now we are about to leave this coast? Are my dreams telling me I have unfinished business?