“What do you mean? Where did you put what?”
“My trumpet, dammit! My freaking trumpet! Smith is going to KILL me!”
I have this conversation in one capacity or other every few months. At night. In my sleep. I’m in the high school marching band, Smith, my kids’ director, is my director and it’s time for rehearsal. Only, my trumpet is nowhere to be found. I even arrive at the rehearsal knowing full well it’s gone missing, hoping maybe it’s been found and is stuck in some oddball corner, under a pile of teen-spirit-scented sweats or something.
But, it’s never there. Never. I spend the dream looking everywhere, asking people, digging under piles of god-knows-what while Smith starts rehearsal without me. So, now, not only am I instrument-less, I’m late. I might as well just jump off a bloody cliff at this point because I’m an adult in the band and am expected to be a role model. But, no. I’m walking halls of my dream high school (the same one every time I dream about a high school), looking, digging, looking, looking…
…and I wake up, never finding it. Every now and then, Smith finds a spare for me and I blow some air through the thing, my tone is kick-ass and I head out to rehearsal. I’m late, so I have to pick up where everyone else is, which means that I’m behind, confused and feeling all sorts of ignorant. The band kids politely tolerate me, even envying my playing ability, but my marching? Poor old woman.
Either with or without a horn, when I awaken I’m stressed, feeling very inferior and left to stumble through the morning wondering why I keep losing my trumpet and why I’m in the high school marching band as an adult. AND, why I didn’t decide to play the freaking kazoo so I could just keep it in my pocket.
I have a few other recurring dreams that spin through my sleep, but this has been the one to recur more frequently as of late. Marching season? Helping Ethan prepare for concert season auditions? Dropping Nathan off and picking him up now and then from OSU music classes? Reuniting with Mindy whose life is at OSU School of Music and who has connections with my kids’ band director? Seeing my high school trumpet instructors a few weeks ago? All of the above?
Dream interpreters say that recurring dreams happen because we haven’t dealt with the issues the dream is trying to teach us. This makes sense to my waking brain, but how in the world are we supposed to deal with a dream’s messages when it makes to freaking sense!?
Okay, I no longer have my actual trumpet from high school. Like a moron, I sold the thing and have regretted it every day since. But, I think I’ve worked through that for heaven’s sake. I do wonder if I should have majored in instrumental music instead of vocal music in college and I even have had Abby’s friends encouraging me to go back to school in instrumental, get re-certified and direct bands. But, eh. I’m obviously contemplating life decisions based on my “What is your calling” questioning, but…
…really? I’m getting tired of having to approach Dream Smith every few nights and say, “Did someone turn an extra trumpet into the office?”
Do you know how discouraging it is to have her be disappointed in you?
Seriously, people. Someone help me find my stupid trumpet, huh?
Your trumpet is your youth. A long-lost time when you hadn’t had yet to deal with crises of faith, when money issues weren’t quite so bad because you weren’t the one in charge so it wasn’t your problem to deal with, when you didn’t have kids to worry about and your fears were usually of the more concrete kind, not the amorphous worries and menaces adults are more cognizant of than kids are.
That’s why you’re back in the high school; you were probably at your happiest there, so that’s the most logical place for you to search for the ignorant innocent bliss you left behind. The kids admire you, of course, because you’re a lot like them, only with more experience and wisdom, but when it comes to actually BEING like them, you’re always going to be a little lacking, a little “behind the times”, so to speak.
Sometimes you are given a shot at recapturing that lost youth; when you get to live vicariously through your kids or watch them following in your band-geek footsteps, but in the end, it’s not truly YOUR youth, and so it can be hollow, and not quite as satisfying as the real thing.
I bet if you ever did find the trumpet in your dream, your adult eyes would probably notice those little imperfections that you’d forgotten about: a little bit of tarnish here, a slight dent or ding there, maybe the mouthpiece is a little out of whack.
Then again, maybe a trumpet is just a trumpet.
[Reply]
curlykew Reply:
November 10th, 2009 at 1:02 am
Dale, I think you just found my trumpet…
[Reply]
[...] were two posts that are worth updating. The first is from November 5, where I talked about my bizarre trumpet dreams. If you click that link, take a moment and read the [...]