Dreams of Teaching

They aren’t nightmares exactly, but after a year of retirement from classroom teaching I’m still having dreams of work, some involve teaching (not being prepared for a class or forgetting until the last week of the semester that I’m even teaching a class (this may not be so much a dream as a memory)) but most tend to involve committee work or department meetings (usually with a component of “What the fuck am I doing here? I’m retired.”). I’ve never been a believer of dreams being some sort of portal to the soul or psyche or subliminal desires or whatever. But I have to admit that these series of dreams – with no apparent connection to my waking dreams – do have me somewhat concerned, if only because I’d rather be dreaming about fishing for bonefish in the Caribbean, driving a Maserati through the Pyrenees, or having sex with . . . well, we’ll just have to wait to see about that one. The point is I’m not able to control my dreams. If life were fair, after retirement, we’d be able to control our dreams, much as we’re able to control our TVs remotely – click, click, click. That seems a reasonable, not to mention affordable, reward for having survived 60-plus years of dreams and aspirations, false promises and dashed hopes. It’s a cruel irony that in our dotage we have to relive our classroom traumas and administrative miseries in our nightly slumber. Anne Sexton wrote that “In a dream you are never eighty.” But Anne Sexton committed suicide when she was 45. What does she know about 80? Or even 60? She didn’t wait around for the dreams.