A Recurring Dream

A few years ago I visited my grandfather in a dream.  He was living in a cabin overlooking a body of water in Japan.  There were the usual dream hijinks surrounding the finding of him - multiple obstructions and misunderstandings - but finally I knocked on the correct door and there he was, and we ate lunch together overlooking the water, watching birds circle.  He was kindly and quiet, as I always remembered him.  Since then I've had a reoccuring dream - my only reoccuring dream in recent years - in which over and over again I miss my plane to Japan.  In one I'm getting a ride down the hill from Mt. Baldy Zen Center and I know I'm going to be late, in another I'm stuck in an airport maze.  And so forth.  I never get there.

Here's a photo of my grandfather, E. Mobray Tate with my grandmother Jo, aboard a Japanese steamer on their way to Bankok from Japan via China, where he was to become a teacher at Bankok Christian College.  It's 1932, and they'll come back in 1941 with my aunt and my newborn mother as part of a prisoner exchange.

The first Zen book I ever read was from my grandfather's library - The Way of Zen by Alan Watts.  When he returned to the States he taught Eastern and Western Philosophy and a few of his many books on the subject leaked into my parent's attic.  He loved Japan - a highlight of his later life was a trip there in 1972.

Granddad died in 1989, while I was slowly making my way across the country, exploring backroads, sleeping in the backseat of my Mercury Monarch, reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.  I was looking forward to getting to California and discussing Eastern philosophy with him, which we'd never done.  In Texas I heard he was in the hospital and I drove straight to Pasadena, but by the time I got there he'd already gone.

This is all to say, if I miss my plane tomorrow well, you'll know I'm a psychic.