A dream of my grandmother.

The other week I dreamnt:

I'm in this stone courtyard, and my two (Hungarian) grandparents are there and they're both on the verge of death. 

My grandfather sits on this stone ledge all nervously, and you just can tell his mind is in another place, from this tense look around his eyes, and the distant look in his eyes as well.

But, my grandmother almost looks young again, and she is just full of delight, so happy to see people, and taking delight in such little things like a flower or a nice bureau, even though she will die soon, and I have this mental picture of my grandmother walking through the rooms of the house at the one edge of the stone courtyard, just talking and laughing with whatever people she happens to be around.

And, I suddenly know that she is dying well, but my grandfather isn't.

And, as I wake up, I have a memory of being in another place like maybe real life and being there with her and holding her hand, and I just see her hand in my head as I come into real life, and I feel strongly comforted and at peace.

And, I lay in bed and think about my grandmother more than I have in years.

Beautiful sight the other week:

As I'm out in the falling snow on my way to the library branch in my neighborhood, I'm walking on the sidewalk past this very long hedge that a few birds are in, and I see on the sidewalk just tons of fresh birdprints down by the base of the hedge, for like ever on the sidewalk, for maybe like a solid twenty feet.

The footprints were quite crisp, and they were quite beautiful.

The neighborhood was all quiet in the falling snow, too.

A Dream of Sorting Mail.

The other week I dreamnt:

I'm sorting mail from the back of a wall of metal mailboxes like in an apartment building, and the cubby holes are just full of letters.

And, I look, and I see here and there peeking out of the different mailboxes copies of Rolling Stone, and Elizabeth Warren is on the cover.

. . .

(Two issues ago Elizabeth Warren was on the cover of Rolling Stone in real life, and in my dream that's the cover that I saw, though in the dream I think I thought it was the current issue.)

Comment overheard at the resthome the other week:

"Look at that bald spot on the back of her head, it's so big you could play tic-tac-toe on it!"

Fun with Hieroglyphics.

My one (Ethiopian) coworker who wears a veil brought me back some coffee from Addis Ababa from her last trip to Ethiopia.

So, I wrote her a thank-you card with hieroglyphics, where it says on the front "We should thank God for a generous person, because they sweeten life."

I came up with that proverb-ish thing and I *think* I used the right grammar and vocab - I had to make up a word for "sweeten" - but I figure, it's close enough, and even if there were some (minor) errors, who would see it?

Honestly, learning hieroglyphics has been one of my best life choices ever.  Go me!

Addendum.

The baby also crawls really fast, and on that same visit, she got into this like little lap routine where she'd crawl out of the living room and down the hallway a bit to this small round metal fixture plate on the wall that's slightly loose, spin it, then turn around and crawl back to the foot of the couch, then turn around and repeat everything all over again.

It was very cute, and I think spinning the plate was a goal for her, like runners have to jog to a certain point and cross a line or touch a certain object, to mark the halfway point of their jog.

Her mom also told me a few months ago that she was at her in-laws and their dog was between the baby and her on the floor, separating them even though they were like three feet apart, and suddenly the baby wanted to be by her mom, but she was looking at the dog and seemed a tad afraid, and she began glancing around nervously.

Then, very quickly and very suddenly, while she was still looking afraid, she decisively got up, and quickly crawled around the dog and straight to her mom.

"She was risking everything, in her eyes," her mom was like, and it was obvious that she was very touched by that.

That baby really is a fast crawler.

Glimpses of child development.

This past month I caught up with my one (half Sudanese) (half British) friend (the sister of the brother-sister pair) as well as her husband, and I got to hang out with them and their now over-a-year-old baby some.

The baby was super cute, and it's been a trip to see her going from being able to sit up if you position her to sitting up by herself to crawling, and now to dragging herself up at the edge of the couch and standing.

For a while recently, too, she was also doing this really cute thing where she'd distinctly say the word "hi," but only in a whisper.

So, when I was over there, she was standing up and holding onto a big cardboard box that they had in the living room, and occasionally bouncing up and down on her feet while holding on to it.

To keep her occupied some, I drummed the top of the box, and then I made a cool sound by scratching my fingernails of both hands over the surface.

She seemed entertained by that, and then like a second later she joined me and started scratching her fingernails of both hands over the surface of the box in pretty much the exact same way.

It was really interesting cognitively to realize how much was going on in there, for her to perceive this very precise motion, and then to go and start doing the exact same thing with her body.

I told her parents what I saw, and her dad was like, "Oh yeah, she's been a total mime lately," and he looked at her and did this popping thing with his mouth.

She just stared at him, but then like thirty to forty seconds later, she was looking in another direction and began doing that same random popping motion with her mouth, so you can tell that the memory of that same random popping motion thing was rattling around in her brain somewhere all that time.

All in all, it was just very fascinating.

A bit after that visit, I was at my doctor's for a physical, and they had a child development chart up, and around the baby's age they noted mimicking as something that babies tended to start doing at around that same exact age.