The setting: a beach house, one of those good-grey-lady-Nantucket types; the start of a long weekend begins in the kitchen, as several couples unpack grocery bags and turn up the music and pour wine; it’s approaching dusk.I’m in that kitchen, feeling the lightness and joy of the room, as laughter rises and falls, rises and falls.Still hearing distant laughter, I’m now standing outside the beach house, at the foot of a sand dune, as the water ebbs closer to the sandy ground below my feet. As the water saturates the sand, I begin to feel that hint of quick-sand feeling you get when you’re standing in the tide: the sand shifts below your feet as your feet sink a little at a time into the sand below. I felt I needed help, and as I turned and looked upward to the top of the sand dune, my ex-husband was standing and watching me. I reached my hand uphill, as if to ask for help, for him to pull me to safety out of the grips of the sand. And, he slowly turned away.He did not pull me from the sinking sand. The scene shifts: I am instantly back in that kitchen, in the atmosphere of merriment, and as I walk diagonally across the kitchen, I’m met in the middle of the room by a man—someone I’ve never known, yet know well in this dream. Our eyes meet, his hand holds my waist, and I see, in his expression, all of his emotions: kindness, adoration, joy, contentment, love.In that moment, I felt what I knew I wanted to feel in the relationship of my dreams. Standing in that unknown kitchen, surrounded by unknown friends, with an unknown lover, I knew the depth of love that is possible. I felt it in that moment.Writing my love list—my declaration to the universe—gave me keen awareness: awareness of who I am, why I am worthy of my heart’s desires, why my past relationships served an important purpose, and what my ideal is--exactly.
