NOW THAT I AM GROWING OLD I AM BEGINNING TO HAVE WONderful dreams. I dream that I am doing things I can no longer do in my waking life, making love to interesting and exotic men, playing highly competitive tennis with exciting opponents on perfectly groomed courts in perfect weather, ice skating down long halls in my mansion. In the ice skating dream a handsome man and I are trying out the halls for the young people and the children. We are deciding how slick the halls should be and how thick to make the ice. This is all easily controlled by a thermostat on a wall in the mansion kitchen. There are ten or twelve young people in the house, ranging from ten or twelve years old to seventeen. In another room are toddlers with their nurses and their mothers but they are playing other games and we are not sure we will let them on the ice. “Hey,” I tell the man. “I’m not making this ice too slick. After all, if they hurt themselves we’re the ones who will have to take care of them.”
“Don’t want to spoil the fun,” he agrees and smiles. He’s falling in love with me, I know. With my intelligence and good humor, with my ability to organize and make decisions. It’s my mansion, after all. The rest of them are here at my invitation.
My dreams are like television situation comedies. They are arranged into scenes which move and blend into other scenes. Old characters remain and new ones are introduced. In the love scenes the men who loved me are my old husbands but decked out in new personalities. One night my lover was a beautiful American Indian with a modern personality. There is no shame or hurry in these love scenes. We talk it over with intelligence. We discuss possible problems that might arise, harm to other people or ourselves, how much emotional weight we should invest in the matter. Sometimes we proceed, sometimes we decide it’s not worth the risk. No one gets hurt in any way. It is passionate but not very. It is like a business transaction or a decision made in a psychoanalyst’s office.
The decisions made in these intelligent, lifelike dreams are all based on what is best for the young people who are in our care. In the dreams I am the alpha female, there are one or two alpha males helping me and we have young children in our care. There seems to hang over the dreams a sense of impending disaster which we constantly monitor. We do not tell the young people about it. It is as if we know there is a hurricane or storm coming and we keep the young near us without letting them be aware of the danger. We are not worried about this approaching storm but neither do we forget it.
I think this is the heaven men have dreamed of. A quiet world with work to do for beautiful young people who look at you with trusting eyes. No matter what I am doing in the dreams, playing tennis, ice skating, making love, I think of myself as a guardian, as someone who is the teacher.
Here’s where the heavenly part comes in. I know I am competent to care for these children. I have no doubt that I will be able to keep them safe. The men who help me are intelligent and thoughtful. There is no way we will make the ice too slick or deep. There is no way the approaching storm will batter down the walls of the fortress we are minding. We go for long walks into the grounds and woods outside the mansion. We tuck the children into safe beds. I patrol the halls while I’m sleeping. I can wake up early if I like or I can go on sleeping.
If this is old age then I adore being sixty-four years old and believe sixty-five is going to be even better. Perhaps then I’ll dream of Medicare and Social Security. Getting checks in the mail from the federal government. Intelligent, good-looking men will call me up and tell me not to send any more money to the I.R.S. “Time to cash in now,” the agent will say. “Thank you, officer,” I will answer. I’ll get into my convertible and drive off with my good-looking companion. We’ll pop open a can of Ensure and drive off into a sunset.