“What do you think the baby is going to be?” he asked after we had laid there for a while in a comfortable silence. “Do you think it will be a boy or a girl?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “Did you want to find out?”
“No, I want it to be a surprise if that’s okay with you.”
“I would like that too,” I said.
“Did you have any names in mind?”
“Only one,” I answered. “If it’s a girl, I thought that I would like to name her Astrid.”
“That’s a beautiful name. I love it. It’s very unusual too. What made you think of that name?”
“It was my mother’s middle name—Paula Astrid.”
I felt a pang of sadness in my chest when I thought about if the baby were to be a girl, and the fact that she would never know her grandmother—the woman who was very much responsible for my being alive and with her father this very day.
“It’s perfect,” Michael said as he held me closer and kissed my forehead. “I love it.”
“What about if it’s a boy?” I asked. “Did you have any ideas for that?”
“Yes, actually I do. I think that if it’s a boy we should name him Julian.”
I got silent for a moment, and when Michael felt the wet tears from my eyes fall against his chest, he gently pushed my chin upward to look at me.
“Are you okay?” he asked with a worried expression on his face. “It was just an idea. We don’t have to name it Julian if the baby is a boy.”
“I think it’s perfect,” I said with a smile. “I couldn’t be more happy about that choice of names.”
I curled up against him and listened to his heartbeat as I fell asleep. It had been a while since I had dreamt of my mother.
I should have known that she would visit me tonight.
This time in my dream, my mother was sitting on the blanket with me as we built a puzzle together. When I was a child, she would usually stand nearby and watch as I built the puzzles with David or with a friend. It was unusual for her to be doing it with me. There was a small pot of tea between us and the scent of mint rose in the steam filled my nostrils with a refreshing sensation. It was always amazing to me how much my dreams seemed to trick my senses, as if I was actually smelling the mint tea and feeling the warm breeze of the summer air as we sat outside together in the back yard.
She didn’t say anything as she put the pieces in their places and smiled at me. I wanted to reach over and hug her and tell her how desperately I missed her and wished she was here with me now. But instead, I waited because there was usually a message—something that my dream was trying to tell me, some mystery that I had to solve.
I looked down at my stomach when I remembered that I was pregnant, but apparently that didn’t carry over to my dreamscape because my belly was flat when I pressed my hand up against it.
“Can I have some tea too?” a small voice called from the doorway.
When I looked over, I saw a small girl. She must have been only seven or eight. She was pretty, with big brown eyes and golden blond hair—hair the color of Michael’s.
“Of course you can,” my mother answered her.
I was shocked to hear her voice and it filled me with a sense of great loss from how much I missed my mom. She usually didn’t speak in my dreams. This was an exception it seemed.
The little girl came over to sit down on the blanket with us and picked up a puzzle piece to put in its spot while my mother poured us both cups of tea.
“Who are you?” the girl asked as she looked up at me after her piece had been placed.
“I’m Lisette,” I answered. “And this is my mom.”
I motioned my hand toward my mother and when I looked back at the little girl, her face was lit up in surprise as if I’d said something quite unexpected.
My mother smiled at her and then looked at me with the same joyful smile that I didn’t see her wear very often during my own childhood.
“You see, Lisette. Your journey, and my journey, they were the same. Our lives have led us here to sit on this same blanket, and sip out of the same pot of tea, and for the three of us to build the pieces of this same puzzle together. I know you feel like you have lost so much, and for that I am truly sorry. But when you really look inside yourself, you will see that you still carry it all with you. And so will she.”
My mother tipped her head toward the girl, who was slurping her tea and eyeing me curiously from over the edge of her teacup. She had the most familiar looking deep brown eyes that looked as if you could fall into them and get lost. For a moment I was mesmerized by them as I couldn’t get rid of the nagging feeling of familiarity. When I peeled my gaze away from her, I had one question that I still wanted to ask my mother before I woke up and lost the chance to be here with her.
“Why haven’t you spoken to me in my other dreams?” I asked.
“There wasn’t anything to say,” she answered.
“How could that be? I had so many questions, and there were so many answers that I needed you to tell me.”
“No,” my mother smiled. “You didn’t. I knew that you would find your way on your own.”
I sat for a minute and tried not to be frustrated with that response.
“Why are you talking to me now?” I asked.
“Because it’s probably the last time that I will see you in your dreams, at least for now.”
“Why?”
I didn’t want that to be true. I didn’t want to lose my mother from the one place that I could still see her.
