By JoEllen Collins
My sense of adventure has changed as I’ve aged, but until recently the thought of volunteering in Africa or checking yet another bucket list entry has popped up, often in dreams or certainly in discussions. Sometimes I yearn to put on my “rollerskate feet” and go to some new place far away, spend extended time in colorful towns or vibrant cities, get to know their inhabitants rather than fellow hotel guests, and restore my faith about the good inherent in most of the world.
Oddly, my recurring recent dreams involve being stuck at journey’s end because people take me late to the airport or there is nowhere to cash enough local money to pay an imagined departure fee. In most of my dreams, oddly, my “daddy” is waiting for me at an airport near my teen-aged home. I can’t call him because I can’t punch the correct buttons on some kind of phone—public or cellular—I need local currency coins, or the buttons are not visible, something that prevents me from that reunion. These incidences appear about every two nights in varied and strange forms. I always remember my dreams, so I keep a pad of paper nearby in case I get an unbidden but terrific subject for my writing.
I’ll let an expert analyze the dreams I have discussed, but I am most interested in why so many of my waking thoughts are about my missed adventures, ones I would take now if it weren’t for my age, financial state, or the pandemic.
Last week, a friend asked me why, in an era of prop planes, I first chose Ecuador and India as volunteer voyages. Why not just book a plane to London, or take a trip to Hawaii on the Lurline? I think it goes back to having read beautifully-illustrated books even as a small and often bedridden child, usually with my mother next to me, which portrayed exotic locales like China, Japan, Scandinavia and old European villages with thatched-roof houses and grazing sheep. I knew that someday I would be in those different landscapes, perhaps wearing native clothes: that, indeed, I could become one of the characters in a vibrant story.
TV didn’t frame my expectations, but I did see wonderful early movies that catered to my fantasies through my teenaged years and more. My best friend and I would drive in my ancient car to Hollywood to attend films. Along with American movies like “Roman Holiday” and “An American in Paris,” we absorbed “foreign films” with subtitles: “Rashomon,” Italian masterworks by De Sica and Antonioni, “The Crucible” in French starring Simone Signoret, “The Red Balloon” and “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” There is a reason “A Man and A Woman” is still my favorite film of all time. I am not its star, Anouk Aimée, but am lucky to have been inspired by the creative images of my generation, with some dreams fulfilled and others fondly remembered. I can walk in memory through Sienna.