life simplified

I often dream I'm in high school taking a calculus test. I have no idea what the questions are even asking and I realize I haven't been going to class for some time which explains my complete confusion. I'm disappointed in myself for letting things get so out of control. And there's the underlying meaning, I think. I'm no dream analyst but this one's pretty easy to pin down.

So last night, for the first time ever, my math test dream was very different. Almost amusingly so. First, the test is not calculus. It's elementary algebra. The problems are simple. I'm combining like terms and simplifying equations. Occasionally, the problem changes after I solve it and I have to solve it a second time but I've got this one. There's a substitute teacher and everybody else is goofing off but I'm in the zone and focused. Nothing can stop me.

I look at the clock. Only one more problem left. Time to spare! I look around the classroom for my boyfriend who's usually there to intensify the humiliation of not knowing any calculus. He's absent. So I send him a text. "Where are you?" The glaring lights of my cell phone are in blatant defiance of the rules. I think he must be home sick.

Note to subconscious: Your boyfriend got married 20 years ago and moved across the country. And, you didn't have a phone that wasn't attached to the wall in high school. But thanks for this one, anyway.

The last problem is a piece of cake. I woke up smiling.

one room

I spent last weekend in a Room. We traveled to a city about four hours away from home to cheer for my son in a soccer tournament. Four days, four nights, and only about four of the hours were actually spent cheering. The other ninety or so hours, I spent in the Room.

Ninety hours in a Room gives you a lot of motivation for a little escape. Since the kids occupied the laptop and TV most of the time, I found time to read a book, not a text book or a book I need to read for work, a book of my choice. Room, by Emma Donoghue, is a story about a woman held captive inside a 12 X 12 room. I had to smile more than once at the irony of it's story and my own situation. Ultimately, I found the ideas about perspective poignant. It's all in how you look at things. Our world is shaped by our own ideas. We make it how it is essentially. So here are two versions of my weekend:

Ninety hours in one room with three kids. The sore throat I felt developing on the ride down was in full swing by mid-trip. It rained all day, Sunday. It was cold and gray and muddy and I was sick with no place to be quarantined. None of us slept well. We wore things off the floor more than once and thought we would rather starve than eat another french fry by the end.

But for four days I didn't wash one dish or get out of bed until after 8. The four of us were united in purpose; to cheer and to win. We were close. We spent two hours in the warm sunshine by the pool. It felt like heaven after a particularly frigid winter. And while reading a book, I savored the freedom I enjoy; even to spend a weekend in a Room. Freedom to choose it, good or bad, is the real prize. Every day.