Semi-prophetic Dreams

Ever since I was a child, I have occasionally had semi-prophetic dreams.  This hasn’t happened in a while, mind you.  At least, not that I can recall.  Simple things, like I’ll dream of a reading a particular email that I do receive the next day or I’ll see someone I just dreamt about, but nothing life-changing or utterly fantastic.  Or maybe the awesome, realistic dreams I’ve had in the past couple of years simply haven’t yet manifested.  I don’t know.  (I do wish a couple of dreams in particular would come true.  Mercy.)

I once had a dream that a school was under attack.  There was gunfire from within, and kids were rushing out of the school doors in a panic.  The name of the school in my dream was Columbus.  This tragedy occurred at Columbine High School the day following my dream.  I remember taking a break at work and watching it unfold on television.  I couldn’t move.

Another night I dreamt I was in a city and I was walking out of a building when suddenly everyone around me started looking toward the sky in a panic.  “The sisters have fallen!  The sisters have fallen!” a woman screamed.  I looked to up only to see a cloud of smoke rolling toward me…  A few hours after I awoke and was pulling into work on September 11th, the news of the first plane hitting the North Tower of World Trade Center came on my car radio.  My heart fell into my stomach.

My semi-prophetic dreams don’t always contain gloom and doom.  Some are pleasant, simple things.  Like a kiss from a man I didn’t know in my dream, but later met and kissed.  A couple of years before I became pregnant with my daughter, I dreamt I was walking into a house with a little girl.  She was holding my hand and we had just picked flowers.  Sitting at a table writing something was a man, and as we came in, he turned around and said, “My beautiful girls!”  The little girl gave the flowers to the man in a cute, shy way, and said, “These are for you, daddy.”  He picked her up and set her on his lap.  Her name was Maya and the man was, in fact, the man who is her dad in real life.  At the time of my dream though, he was living in Atlanta and had been for a couple of years, and the possibility of having a child with him was, well, impossible.  Plus, another child was not in my plans.  (Interestingly enough, the following day my friend came to work and said she had also dreamt that I had a little girl.)

Anyway, years later when we were together and I found out I was pregnant, I knew that if I did have a girl, her name would be Maya.  Although the rest of my dream hasn’t come true since she’s now around the age she was in my dream and he and I are not together, the most life-changing (and the best) part did manifest.

When I was twelve, I dreamt I was swinging on the swing set at the elementary school.  I was enjoying the day, swinging along, when I noticed two old men dressed in early 1900’s sort of clothes standing off to the side.  One of the men was, oddly enough, Christopher Plummer.  I was suddenly swinging higher and higher while they stood there, chatting with each other and watching me.  I then flew out of the swing and started to fall to the ground, face first.  Below me was a flat, squarish gravestone.  It was a marbled gray and it had a small, cloudy mirror set into it.  Carved above the mirror: September 13 (the year I couldn’t see).  I heard Christopher Plummer slowly say, “This is the day I died.”  I then fell face-first into the gravestone.  

Strange dream for a twelve year-old child to have, yes?  And why Christopher Plummer, you ask?  No clue.  My only guess is that my mom had watched Somewhere In Time prior to my dream.

At any rate, I’ve thought about that dream throughout the years, mostly when September rolls around.  I don’t necessarily believe I will pass on to… whatever comes after this life on September 13 of some unknown year.  The dream could mean anything and nothing at all, just a random dream of a child.  In fact, many years I’ve forgotten all about that dream until October rolls around.  However, when I do remember, as I have this year, I will admit that I don’t take unusual risks.  Life is full of freaky accidents as it is; I don’t need to increase my odds by skydiving or rappelling in Zion today.

I don’t speak of my dreams often as it tends to freak people out, even though many people have dreams about things that come true, especially monumental events.  I can’t really explain my theory on it, other than I don’t think time is as linear as we believe it to be and I don’t believe what we see before us is the end-all-be-all of existence.  I’m pretty sure physics backs me up on that one.

Do any of you fine people have dreams like this?  Dreams that seem random and disjointed, but later make complete sense when certain events unfold before your eyes?