"We can't control how we feel, only what we can do about it!"

I had the strangest dream last night. You ever have those dreams that seem so insanely realistic that you wake up from them doubting reality?

I was at a reunion of some sort - most like a high school reunion of lost friends and their families. In this dream, I was at a public park catching up with people that I haven't seen (or even thought of) for years. One of them was a guy I knew in Junior High - not even really High School, we lost touch around 9th or 10th grade. We were all sitting in the sun at this park when some sort of disaster struck, I can't remember the details. Perhaps an earthquake, maybe war.. dunno. Everyone began grabbing their loved ones, children, and running for cover. This guy - let's call him James - screams at me, "Go get Taylia. You have to save Taylia." At this point in the dream I had only glimpsed his daughter while she played. I look at him strangely, wondering why he would choose me to go after her. He looks me right in the eye and says "You have to save our daughter."

And then everything sort of clicked for me in a way that can only be done in dreams when it is all make believe. He and I had had a daughter together, but being young as we were, we had jointly chosen to give her up for adoption. It was a decision we had not easily made, and he was less easily given to the adoption. Unbeknownst to me, he had, through his family attorney, been the "adoptive" parent(s). He had not been willing, in the end, to give up his child, yet also did not want to force me to be a parent when I was apparently unready and unwilling. He had been raising our daughter for the last 12 years, and this was how I was to find out, in the face of tragedy.

I don't recall the details for the next few moments of the dream, so flash-forward to everyone is safe and we are somewhere else and he is telling me the whole story, filling me in on Taylia and all of her childhood endeavors. I just keep staring at her, trying to make up for lost time perhaps, trying to memorize her features and find the similarities, all while he talks. I am going through a plethora of emotions - sadness, regret, anger, happiness, tears, overwhelmed... he is staring at me, trying to gauge all of these emotions and what I am feeling...

And then Bruschi whines to wake me and let me know he needs to go out. I sit right up in bed, looking around for Taylia and James, feeling like someone just handed me the last piece of a puzzle and then set it to fire. I begin to go through my life, year by year.. almost checking to see if I have somehow forgotten this sequence of events, purged it from my memory. It took a decent ten minutes to straighten out my head.

Even now, six and a half hours later, I kind of miss them. Dreams are strange.