Mood:
chattyTopic: Paden City in our dreams
Sometime last fall, we had company for the weekend, and my husband and I decided to give up our bed and sleep out in our travel trailer. We had done this many times in the past when we had overnight house guests. This time was different because of my husband's dependence on oxygen. We figured we'd give it a try... what the heck? He had some portable tanks, so we took them out to the camper and lit the propane heater, excited at the prospect of "roughing it."
Neither of us got much sleep. We weren't used to a smaller bed, and it was a cold night. I kept worrying about my husband's portable oxygen tank running out, and would rouse myself about once every hour to check and see how close it was to empty.
Also, he was talking in his sleep. At one point he said, "Paden City."
Paden City is a town across the Ohio River from us, in the state of West Virginia. We may have passed through it once or twice since we moved to this area, and we weren't that familiar with it. Why my husband had said "Paden City" in his sleep was a mystery to me. So, I asked him in a low voice, "What about it? What about Paden City?"
Still in his sleep, my husband mumbled, "Have to move there... to Paden City."
Yeah, right. I smiled to myself and tried to get some sleep. At some point I dozed off, and what do you think I dreamed about? Paden City! I dreamed I was at a job interview in some kind of publishing business, and I was planning to move to Paden City and go to work. I even dreamed about what the town was like and a little house with a small fence in the front yard, where I was possibly going to live. Everything was quite vivid in my dream.
When I awoke in the morning, I told my husband about my dream. "Paden City?" he asked. "What did you dream about that for?" Then I told him what he had said in his sleep. He couldn't remember anything about it, of course. So we laughed about it.
Several months have passed since we had that experience in the trailer. I have never forgotten the weirdness of it, but now I have a fascination for a little West Virginia town that I pay particular attention to every time we drive through it. I often wonder why Ethan dreamed we had to move there, when we've got such a nice place here in the woods on Jackson Run. And why did I pick up on his dream and dream about it myself?
I guess we'll never know the answer, and I'm sure it's nothing important or even metaphysical. It was just one of those strange things that happens. Dreams are interesting, and symbolic in many ways. Perhaps one day I'll know the meaning of Paden City.
