From Halfway Around the World

Brothers and sisters separated by distance joined by love.

~Chuck Danes

“Is everything alright?” my sister asked. This was back in the days before cell phones, before texting, before people stayed up all night on social media. This was back when our household had one phone, and it sat in the hallway for everyone to share.

My mother, who was always ready for unexpected news, was the first one to get to the phone. She was barely awake as she held the receiver to her ear. “What? Who?” Then she recognized my sister’s voice on the other end of the line. “Do you know what time it is?” she asked with obvious annoyance.

My sister did know what time it was, but she was insistent. “Is everyone alright?”

“Who is it?” I asked as I stumbled out of my room. I’d also heard the phone, but having the farthest bedroom in the apartment, it took me the longest to get there. At the time, we lived in an old, five-story walkup. The apartment was enormous. The building had once been considered luxurious, but that time had passed, and the structure was showing its age.

“It’s your sister,” my mother said as she came fully awake. “She wants to know if everyone is alright.”

“Isn’t she in Italy?” I asked, as if being halfway across the world made the call even more annoying.

“Yes, she is,” my mother assured me. Then, turning her attention back to the phone, she said, “Honey, it’s 2 a.m. here. Why are you calling to ask if everyone is alright?”

There was a hesitation, a pause, and then I heard my sister say in a small voice, “I had a dream.”

In some households, that might have resulted in an eye roll or look of disbelief. But in our household, dreams were never dismissed. Dreams were important. With careful coaxing, my mother got the story out of her.

She’d dreamt that I was hurt. My face was bleeding, and my nose was broken. She thought I looked like I’d been in a car accident, but that was impossible since I was too young to drive.

My mother calmed her down and assured her it was only a bad dream. There was nothing to worry about. The best thing we could all do was go back to sleep. My sister agreed only after I got on the phone and assured her everything was all right.

“Well, that was…” I was going to say something “clever” as I hung up the phone, but I was interrupted by a loud crash coming from my bedroom.

My mom and I rushed to my room to discover that a six-by-four-foot section of my bedroom ceiling had collapsed. The ancient plaster had come down in a single block and landed on my bed. My pillow, the spot where my head had lain only a few minutes earlier, was pinned beneath the crumbling building material. My mother and I looked at each other in stunned silence.

We found out later that the collapse was the result of heavy rains and an undiscovered leak that funneled water between the walls. The plaster above my bed had gotten soaked and slowly peeled away from the wooden boards in the ceiling. My mother made me swear not to say anything to my sister, but it was obvious to both of us that something incredible had happened.

Had my sister not had a dream; had she not called us in the middle of the night; had she not pulled me out of bed and into the hallway, I could have been seriously injured. That didn’t happen because of a dream. Or was it a premonition? Either way, it taught me never to take a dream lightly — even if it comes to you at 2 a.m. from halfway around the world.

— Arthur Sanchez —