The Mythic Call to Adventure
The Dreams That Launched the Books & the Website
The First Dream of a Series
(Reprinted from Volume I, Before I Lay Me Down to Sleep)
On July 22, 2024, at 2:00 a.m., I was sleeping peacefully, minding my own business. My dogs rested quietly at the foot of my bed. Then a dream came — so real and astonishing that it startled me out of sleep.
But first, some context.
In waking life, I had been thinking a lot about age. I was approaching 74. “Who is that old woman?” I would sometimes wonder when I caught my reflection in the mirror.
For the past six years, I had worked as a cashier at an upscale organic food store. The job offered me friendly customers, interesting coworkers, and a health-conscious environment. I was grateful. But working as a cashier had not been my childhood dream.
When I was nine, I wanted to be a stewardess, as we were called in those days. My father was a commercial airline pilot, and that little girl’s longing was natural. When our family flew on DC-3s — with 21 passengers and a single flight attendant — I was sometimes allowed to wear a flight attendant cap and walk the aisle, asking smiling passengers if they wanted coffee, tea, hot chocolate, or lemonade. It was my idea of heaven.
In my teens, I dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. I did not bond well with other children, but I adored my dog and pet rats. They were my solace.
At 17, I had the good fortune to spend a year as an exchange student in France. I lived with a woman who was a medical doctor and her two children. That year planted the idea of medicine in my mind. By the time I was 19, I dreamed of joining the Peace Corps as a doctor, serving in a French or Spanish-speaking region, fighting infectious disease. (Early hero-rescuer complex.)
But in hindsight, it was not going to happen. I struggled to retain what I read. I experienced long stretches of what I now know as “brain fog.” Childhood depression was not widely recognized in the 1960s. It was there, but I did not have words for it yet.
Despite several attempts to take pre-med and other college courses, I often withdrew mid-quarter, overwhelmed by depression and my inability to retain material. I knew if I stayed, I would fail.
