I dreamed last night that I woke up  in a different life, one I couldn’t remember creating for myself. In the dream I wondered out loud who these people were and how I got there. I tried to appreciate it, but I felt so disjointed and out of place. I didn’t feel in-love or rested. I didn’t feel like I belonged in the house they said was mine with a man I didn’t really know.

And then, slowly, I remembered a man I used to know. The man who, in this dream, was once my husband. I grabbed my phone of my nightstand and struggled to find his phone number, fumbling and mis-dialing in the frustrating way you do in dreams, like when you’re trying to run but it feels like your feet are anchored in mud.

In this dream, when I finally heard his voic  on the other line, I said “I miss you.” And then he showed up inside my new house in my weird life and we closed the door on a room I’ve never seen before and I wrote on a piece of paper “Will you take me back?”

And he nodded yes.

And then the alarm started buzzing in the room where I was lying next to him, in my real life, in the dark.  I opened my eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. I had gone to bed disjointed and sort of annoyed with him.

I woke up relieved and grateful he was still next to me.

I wrapped my robe around me and shuffled downstairs to wake up the baby as he pulled his clothes on for work, leaving him standing in the closet buttoning his shirt and smoothing down his hair. I opened the door to our baby’s dark room and reached into her crib to rub her back and pull her up to me, gently coaxing her awake as she snuggled into my shoulder. I said “Wake up, wake up baby!” and she pulled her head away from my shoulder, looked into my face and grinned.

She’s heading to daycare this morning, strapped in the backseat of her daddy’s work pickup, dressed in her pink horse shirt, sucking on her bottle and clutching her favorite blankie, leaving me to tick through work projects and head to town for meetings and pass the time by helping to make some money so that we can all be together at the end of the day, eating and laughing and complaining and worrying together the way families do.

But it will take me all day to shake the feeling of that dream.

As we approach a long weekend, on a day set aside to honor those who have worked and sacrificed for us in the name of country, I hope we can find a place to take a breath in the aftermath of an election that has left our country vibrating with emotion.

Because some of our best work as Americans is done at home and in our communities, loving one another.

And on that note, I’ll leave you with a story about a man in my hometown who misplaced his wallet in the grocery store. When he got the call that it was found, he opened it to find that the person who returned it had added a $20 bill.

That’s simple, unselfish kindness there.

So while I really wanted to challenge you all to unplug and step away from our news streams and news feeds this weekend, what I’d really like to hear are more stories like this. 

Please share them with us in the comments or on my Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages. Let’s spend the weekend in the familiarity of gratitude.

Peace, Love and weekend Pancakes,

Jessie