I offended Sara Thompson, a teaching colleague at Victoria College, by making a few drunken remarks and have been regretting ever since.
It’s been two years now since she left and went to York University to teach Victorian Lit to grad students and yet I still dream of her every night.
My dreams are what I call lucid dreams—they begin with my daydreaming about Sara as I lie in bed before sleep and then they continue on through the night.
The dreams always follow the same pattern—we are lost in the woods and I build a shelter from the rain and as we lie in our hut of branches safe from the storms, we talk and manage to reconcile.
Unfortunately, I wake up the next morning still feeling bereft and grieved that I alienated the girl of my dreams.
I know it sounds hopeless and pathetic and it is.
It sucks to be me.
It’s Monday morning and the start of a new semester and I get a call from Hilda Thornton, the Colleges’ Liaison Committee chairman.
She has been exploring initiatives to ensure a closer curricular continuity with local colleges and has come up with a novel plan.
She can barely contain her enthusiasm as she breaks the news to me.
”As you know, Theo, I’ve been looking at various ways we could merge our curricula with other universities to ensure more continuity, and Dean Henderson of the Psych Department came up with a brilliant suggestion.”
It was still early in the day before my morning coffee and I must admit I was stifling a yawn and rolling my eyes.
But then Hilda said something that made me stop and catch my breath.
”Dean Henderson recalled working with a group called Therafields and they would regularly meet and share various psychotherapeutic techniques, and they did this by arranging periodic meetups at the university farm—just collegially socializing and conversing sitting a round a campfire on the property.”
“Sounds interesting,” I remarked, wishing she’d hurry up and finish so I could get my jolt of morning joe.
She continued, “Well, I was thinking we could begin small by having the staff members in charge of the Victorian Lit courses at York and our College get together this weekend for a meetup and see where it goes.”
I felt my heart stop—it was a scenario I had rehearsed nightly in my dreams and I immediately thought of Sara Thompson.
”But what do you think, Theo? she asked. "Does this seem a bit impractical—I mean, do you really think anyone would respond to my invite?”
“It doesn’t sound impractical at all, Hilda—in fact, I think it’s a brilliant idea. You send out the invites and I’ll offer to play host, if that’s agreeable to you.”
“Oh wonderful, Theo! I felt unsure suggesting it but seeing your positive response I’m totally encouraged. I’ll get on it right away and set it up for Friday evening to Sunday afternoon at the farm.”
As I got off the phone, I was in a daze—the prospect of an opportunity to reconnect with Sara seemed almost a stroke of Fate.
I wondered if my nightly musings had anything to do with magnetizing the forces of the universe to come to my aid.
Maybe my constant daydreaming about Sara brought about the very conditions that allowed us to meet.
Or maybe our souls were really still tethered to each other and this was some form of lovers' telepathy.
I could hardly wait until the weekend to find out.
