Only What You Can Hold

I am a “dreamer” of sorts. I often remember most or all of my dreams, but every once in awhile I have a dream that feels like it has a weight of significance about it. Sometimes, the interpretation is pretty clear. Sometimes, not so much. This is what I dreamed last night:

I was standing in a vaulted room, looking across a large copper cauldron as wide as I was tall. A shadowy figure whose features were hidden in the gloom of the ceiling heights stirred the cauldron steadily with a long black hook. Inside the cauldron, boxes of various shapes and sizes floated in a murky mist, like ice in a swirled glass.

“You can only keep what you can hold,” the figure intoned. It shifted the hook, and plucked an oily plug from the bottom of the swill. The mist began to swirl, draining from the cauldron.

Urgently, I leapt into the cauldron and started gathering as many boxes as I could. Only then could I read the labels: Song Lyrics, High School, Memories of My Mother. To my surprise, one of the boxes was labeled Franzia.

The mist was swirling away the boxes. Some were clearly more precious than others. I started trying to sort, grasping at ones that caught my eye. Memories of My Children as Babies: that one was sodden and mildewed, but I clutched at it anyway. A Day We Were All Together.  Song Lyrics. Memories of my Family. Memories of… That one slipped into the void before I could rescue it.

My hands were too full to catch anything more, and still precious memories swirled out of reach. Vocabulary. Memories of my Father. Witty Conversation. The Scent of My Daughter in My Arms. I dropped the box labeled Franzia, wondering why it was still in my hand, and grasped after something more precious.

“I am very surprised you dropped that one,” the shadowy figure said. I hesitated, wondering why. Was there something in it more valuable than I knew?

I reached out to take it back, and swirled down the drain.