Last night I dreamed that Dad had died. It seemed, in fact, as if I dreamed that for a while, woke up, then went back to sleep and the dream was still there, as if insisting I pay attention. I spent most of the night (or so it felt) going around seeing to things: the distribution of stuff, the contents of the closets in their bedroom, hugging Ruth, Mom, and even Laurie, which was very comforting but still every few minutes I kept feeling the press of tears. At one point Chris & I were lying in Dad & Ruths bed, and the old stripey sheets were on there. He said, Im so tense! I said, You might be less frustrated if you would just let yourself be sad. Finally, he and I arrived at the front desk of some unspecified institution--hospital? Nursing home?--and the lady there gave us the last of his things. There was a ring. Chris immediately took it and tried it on, which grabbiness kind of annoyed me but I didnt feel like fighting about it, and the top instantly turned into four hazelnuts which started to fall open. He ate some of the nutmeat. There was some kind of bracelet which he also went after. I forgot about all that stuff and whatever else there may have been after it when she brought out two little velvet bags, a purple one for Chris and a blue one for me. These were items Dad had made for us. He opened his and out came a small handful of tiny, silver wolves, varying in size from about a centimeter long, down to about half that. I had a similar collection of tiny silver whales. If you put them end to end just right, and in the right order, they sort of clicked together, not sticky like legos but in such a way that you could tell which ones fit between which other ones. The lady behind the desk said something like The interlocking patterns of our lives--/Nothing fits together like men and wives, but not exactly that. I knew I should have noted it when I first woke up. Any way, it was at this time that I finally began to cry in earnest, and I woke up (it was probably about 3 or 4 am) and cried for a while. Later, after going back to sleep, I had more pleasant dreams about having sex with, respectively, a fourteen-year old girl with beautiful, tan skin and good-humoured, bright brown eyes; a woman at least my age with mischeivous, sharp features, who was a member of a group I was about to leave in disillusionment, and on my way out I said to her quietly, You know I find you intensely attractive etc, etc, and she said Well I had no idea! and started kissing me (which was fine except I had a bad taste in my mouth from its being so early in the morning and all the other dreams I had been thru in the sticky heat [not that I knew at the time that that was the reason]); and--someone else whom I cant remember right now. A boy maybe? And later I was outside, at some kind of practice session with baseball and bat, and it was just this one other guy, a coach, and me, and oddly enough the coach was acting civilized and offering suggestions about form and technique, and it was going to be my turn soon, and I was a little apprehensive but getting excited about the idea that maybe, after all these years, I might have a chance to really learn how to swing a bat, and instead of being ridiculed for not knowing how, to be respected for wanting to learn.