don't dream its over...

Shugga. Shugga. Shugga.

When I was little I had this reoccuring dream where I had to drive a car from Newberg to McMinnville. This is a distance of about 20 miles. In the dream I was never old enough to drive. I could barely see over the stearing wheel. I would drive though, for a few miles, and then I would see a cop and I would get scared and jump in the back seat to hide. Now, if I'm in the back seat, who is driving the car? No one. The car would drive itself and the cops never stopped it and I would lounge in the back seat, occasionally peeking out of the windows. I always woke up before I got home. I actually never got out of Newberg. Maybe that is why I always considered this dream a nightmare; I was stuck in Newberg. Newberg is a small town near the small town, McMinnville, that I grew up in. I have always harbored an unexplainable hatred for it. Maybe it's because the traffic is always bad, or the fact that they have a drive-in theater and McMinnville doesn't, or the fact that it is twenty minutes closer to Portland.

Now, in my older age, my reoccuring dream invovles my dead grandma. It is usually Thanksgiving and the whole family is together and my grandma is there visiting, back from the dead. The fact that she is dead usually comes up. We whisper it to each other while doing dishes, "Isn't she dead?", "How long is she here for?", "Why is she here?". But mostly we are happy to have her back and even though she is dead, everything is relatively normal. She is normal, like nothing ever happened. She never says anything about being dead or what it's like, or where it is. We all just sit and eat and talk and be happy. These dreams are never nightmares.

I tried to write a story based on this dream. A story about a family Thanksgiving in which their dead grandma shows up. It was hard though. I couldn't figure out the POV. First it was in third and then I wanted it in first, but I couldn't figure out whose perspective to do it from. I settled on the dead grandma's perspective but it was hard to write. Do dead people have feelings, nerves? Should I make her look normal or should I make her look dead, like a zombie? These are some of the problems I ran into. I went the route of having the grandma look dead, but it was so grotesque, imagine a dead body at the table, who is talking, and eating turkey. That was another thing, do dead people eat?