analyze this

The last three mornings, I woke up at exactly 6:27 on the clock, from the same dream.

I am walking on flood water, my feet are tired, which means I have been walking for quite a while. Strange thing about the flood water, it is clear; clear like tap water. I hear the jingling of coins and I look around and there are dimes and nickels everywhere.

In the first dream, I hear a voice and I turn my head. I see Benjamin standing against a wall. He's wearing a faded army green golf shirt. I do not see his face, yet I know it is him. I wake up.

The second time the dream repeats, I see Benjamin again. This time he turns around and looks at me. I call his name. I wake up.

This morning, as I go through the dream sequence, I resolve to not wake up so I know what happens. Benjamin's face is serious. He is not his usual self. Benjamin always smiles. Facing him, I touch his arm, the lean yet strong arms that once held me when we were young. He smiles at me, briefly. Why the sad face? I ask. He turns his head and just like that his image fades away from me.

I did not want to open my eyes; I willed myself to go back to sleep. I could see the clear water, it is cold. I could hear the jingling of the coins. I could see a shadow, Benjamin's I reckoned, walking away. I heard a loud ringing. It was my phone. I looked at the digital clock on the table by the foot of the bed. 6:27, the red letters almost fading in the bright morning sunshine.

In the shower, it came to me. A realization. A recollection. It was the same dream I had dreamed when I was still a young girl, barely ten years old. I stood in the middle of the bathtub, water running down my skin like tiny rivers. I closed my eyes, forcing myself to look back at that dream. Was there more that I forgot?

I finished my shower. As I stepped out of the bathtub, I jammed my knee on the edge and I almost lost my balance. I grabbed hold of the towel rack. For a split second, the whole bathroom spinned and I thought I was going to have vertigo yet again. Then it dawned on me: I saw Ben in my dreams eight years before I met him. Why would I have to remember this after fifty years?

My best friend in high school, Carmencita, and I did an experiment for a year. We recorded the times we thought of each other when we were not in school. We kept a log in our notebooks and would compare them the next day. She used her wrist watch, but because I didn't have one, I depended on the radio or the little cuckoo clock on our kitchen wall. Our logs showed that we thought of each other at almost the same time, sometimes a minute or two off. We also logged what we were thinking at the time and ninety percent of the time, we thought of the same things.

Could it be that I have been thinking of Benjamin a lot lately? I couldn't understand why. I didn't want to attribute it to my age. Or maybe he's thinking about me.

I am wary of going to bed, I don't want to dream the dream if it's a harbinger of things to come.

 

it's just another new year's eve

The text message came at almost seven this morning. "Happy new year," it said.

I knew who sent it. My mind went back to that last morning that Benjamin and I went jogging by the seaside, the sunrise shining on Manila Bay whose waters sparkle under the blue sky.

We were sitting at one of the restaurant tables one morning after our jog. He was well aware that it was my last day and we sat and chat a lot longer that day.

"What if it had been us?" he said, lips smiling, but his eyes almost seemed sad.

"You would have left me after a few years," I replied.

He turned, the disappointment evident in his face. "Why do you say that?"

"Because I could never have children. And you men want to have children." I stretched a leg to another chair nearby, avoiding his gaze.

"You know I am not like that."

Did I hurt his feelings? I thought not. He was simply declaring.

"I know you're not. But your life wouldn't be complete without children," I said, briefly glancing at him.

"When you love someone," I heard him say, then he corrected himself, "When I loved you, it was unconditional."

I straightened up, leaned across the table from him and looked at him square in the eye. "Do you still love me?"

He made a brief chuckle and joked about the seriousness of my face. I eased back into my chair. We laughed together while he fiddled with his Blackberry, put on a song that was part of a file I gave him the day before, then placed the Blackberry between us on the table, Eydie Gorme blaring, competing with the sounds of the waves and the drone of the people around, along with helicopter sound above and the traffic behind us.

"I'm constantly thinking about you." He mumbled something else.

Our eyes locked for a moment before we burst into another giggling fit.

"I heard that. Rockin' solid, man! I heard that!" I said in between giggling and breathing.

His face suddenly became serious.

"Is that true, what you just said?" I asked, my voice uncharacteristically softer and lower.

He looked at me and smiled, a sad smile, I reckoned.

"What does your wife say about that?" I asked.

He stretched his legs as he relaxed, took the Blackberry and put on a Lani Hall song. I Don't Want You To Go blared between us.