WARNING: Sentimental Nonsense Ahead.
Those with weak stomachs are advised against proceeding.
Some Texas neighborhoods have alleys behind rows of houses, and in some the yard behind you butts right up against a shared back fence. In the house where I grew up, a deep, wide concrete ditch – which I now know is called an arroyo but which we, for God only knew what reason, called a creek – separated our meandering row of homes from those behind it.
Situated on a corner lot, our home also had the dubious pleasure of overlooking the yawning, black maw of a tunnel that opened at the end of the arroyo, tunneled under the street, and went… I never cared to find out where. My brother told me homeless people had a city down there.
Occasionally this ditch became a raging river of storm water, but the rest of the time a tiny trickle of moisture followed the deepest part of the ditch to empty into a real creek in an older part of the neighborhood.
I met a girl in church one Sunday when my fellow fourth-graders and I had to share a classroom with the fifth graders. She commented on my long nails, and I might have complimented her beautiful, curly red hair. That was the entirety of the interaction.
Weeks later, I followed my brother along the ditch to his friend’s house at the other end. As my brother climbed over their chain-link fence to meet his buddy, the kid’s little sister wandered out of the house toward us. Imagine our mutual surprise when we recognized the fourth grader with the long nails and the fifth grader with the beautiful red hair.
That was well over 20 years ago, and though we moved away and grew up, we became and remain so close that I call her my sister. That creek was the main artery of our budding friendship, and it’s imprinted itself onto my brain with some very strange consequences for my dreams.
Sometimes I dream the creek is overflowing with storm water right up to the level of our back fence, a good 25 feet of water tearing away at our backyard until the swimming pool becomes part of the river.
Sometimes I’m navigating a labyrinth of shortcuts through and around strangers’ back yards, just like she and I did while we worked out the best and fastest ways to get from her house to mine and all our friends’ houses in between.
The best dreams are also the worst, because they fill me with such painful longing that waking up is almost a relief. The creek behind my house isn’t a creek at all: When I venture back there, I find instead a real river winding through a Narnia-esque forest overflowing with mystery, adventure, and danger.
The only dangerous thing we ever found in the creek was a soft-shelled turtle. It was the size of a large house cat and was not very friendly.
– AK