I had a dream about Nuala’s last dog, Sophie. Sophie was a shih-tzu and she made little gurgling grunts like an Ewok when she was pleased; I have rarely been so fond of someone else’s pet. In the dream Nuala and I were sitting in a restaurant and Nuala ordered a hamburger for Sophie. She was very specific: no bun, no lettuce, no tomato, just meat and plain mustard. This is what Sophie likes, she explained.
All morning that seemed significant until I went to make a cup of tea for myself. That’s when I realized you don’t need to examine my dreams to understand me, you just have to look at my tea shelf. For example, I don’t really like peaches, yet I have two kinds of peach tea.
When I was still dating around, the Moms would frequently get exasperated over me dating the wrong men. “You’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole,” she would say, somehow in such a way that prevented me from sniggering about it.
Two peach teas. When am I going to learn to order the things I want?