tales from an ordinary world

1999-10-15

dream - walking. Dad is walking^* too. He's naked (maybe I am too, I didn't notice). We walk into some place that might be a science show ? There's a guy in the room we wander into, who says something like "uh, I'm nearly ready." We move on. Some people are standing over some bubbling saucepans. They appear to be making some sort of foamy stuff (polyurethane ?), as a group participation exercise. One person dips his hand in and comes out with a handful of white foam...

^* Dad's been wheelchair-bound (a paraplegic - paralysed from the waist down - his legs have withered away, but his arms are fine, or perhaps stronger than they were, since he pushes himself around) since 1980, after a gliding (no, not hang gliders, the planes-without-engines kind of gliders) accident. I was 7 years old, in grade 2 of primary school. I'd take time off school to go with Mum to visit him at the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg. I remember the friendly old hospital gatekeeper, with his kittens and his plums. And I'll never forget that chemical hospital smell. Later on, when he was out of hospital, and adjusting to life in a wheelchair, I had dreams (or maybe fantasies ?) of being in some sort of accident where I'd conveniently end up wheelchair-bound : I wanted to be just like Dad.