(no subject)

[beccaelizabeth]

Dreams have interesting plots sometimes. I just woke up from one where a woman gets to time travel through her own life, but only one day every ten years, and she doesn't get to pick the day. So she sees all her ten year birthdays I think, so there's always a big family Thing. For the first few times she lurks in the background and can't interact, but one time she gets caught on automatic camera, and the next time she turns up she gets caught. But then she looks so much like, well, herself, she concludes there's only one person she could be - her long lost biological mother, who had to give her up for adoption. So she invites herself to the party. And then she gets to spend one afternoon with her family, but seeing them all from a different angle.
Her husband is still sort of a jerk from that angle. Still too much of a guy, still actually is flirting with other women, still vanishes off with his guy friends too much, still too driven about business.
Her son, however, is a sweetheart. And having had time to think she can tell when he's just echoing his father and she tells him he'll regret it. When he's just being himself he's sweet and bright and talented. And, like she always suspected, gay. At first she tries waaaaay too hard to get him to talk, she has this whole sincere "If there's anything you want to tell me" line that makes her *facepalm* with realising how that must sound. But then a dismissive go-out-in-the-yard-and-play type comment from the husband gets an eyeroll and then inspires a demonstration. The son is a chemistry teacher (a bit old to be sent out to play then) and really enthusiastic about his work. And all she has to do is tell the truth and admit she never paid as much attention to chemistry as she'd now like and he's getting out chalk and gathering household chemicals and doing some cool classroom demonstrations (of the doesn't-go-boom type, because it is a family day) with little equations to go with them. It's very cool.
And then the rest of the guests that his mom/she invited turn up, starting with his now-ex long time girlfriend, who is back from living afar... with her own girlfriend taging along. The ex has long lavender hair and her girlfriend is more of a waistcoats and bowl cut look. The son looks at the pair of them and mutters 'yup, should have brought my boyfriend'. And then remembers family is in earshot and shoots her a conspirators grin.
So, now she knows for sure.
But then it got a bit tragic because from her seat out on a bench in the garden she gets to see why the husband went outside for so long that day. He was having a heart attack and didn't want to spoil her day so he just sat out there until the doctor turned up. And by the time he did the pain was going away so he was all 'no, really, fine now' and the family doctor was an old guy by then and then from her perspective the first time around he just turned up at the party and nobody noticed that the husband really needed actual medecine.
And then older-her gets a bit overwhelmed and starts sobbing at some remark that really should have been innocuous, because she knows that by the next time she'll get to drop in in ten years, both father and son are dead. And she's sorry about the son even at the time.
She'd also been convinced somehow that the son secretly comitted suicide, but finding this extra bit of medical data makes a lot of other stuff fall into place, and now she can believe that it really was just a tragicly young heart attack.
She also believes that maybe she never got to meet him, but her son must have made someone very happy, because he's just that kind of guy.

So then I woke up.

It's not running around with daleks or cybermens, but it's a time travel story, and kind of a detective story too. Like ghosts, only more physical. I kind of like it.

And it sounds depressing but actually I'm really kind of up about it, cause it managed to be so hopeful. It was like she started out thinking it was all regrets and she was just going to get dragged through a wreck of a life and yet whenever she went she found these extra glimpses that made the shiny show up again. It was a life, you know?

*shrugs*



Actually the part I'm most annoyed about is the thing where I forgot all about Heroes for another week, making it two weeks and an actual missed episode. But I can just order the US DVDs and watch it on them. UK DVDs aren't out for ages, I think.


I should go back to sleep now. I don't know what I'm doing up. Well, I do, four hours sleep is an amount I can do a whole day on, but eight hours works out a lot better in the long term.

Comments

[hobgoblinn.livejournal.com]

What a beautiful dream. I wish you would flesh that out into a short story. Tragedy and hope are two things that should be mixed more. Because the Tragedy-- that's just a given. But how humans rise above and find meaning and hope-- or no meaning, but hope anyway-- that's the amazing thing about our species. And a story well worth the telling, and the hearing.