Last night, I dreamed I was back at the house where I grew up in Princeton, West Virginia. Everything looked the way I remembered it.
Britni was sitting in a lounge chair on the sidewalk in the front yard, enjoying the sunshine while I was over in the side yard meeting our new neighbors, who apparently were billionaires. Dreams just hand you information like that and expect you not to question it…it seems so normal. lol
While we were talking, I noticed two people walking up the sidewalk toward Britni. I recognized one of them immediately. It was David, the son of my old babysitter, and walking with him was a little girl about 10 years old who I didn’t recognize.
I started walking over toward them, and without even thinking about it, I reached over to the billionaire lady, put my left arm around her waist and held her right hand with my right hand—the same way I walk with Britni.
She just went with it.
Once we got over there, I laughed and said, “Well, my gosh, I’ve been walking you like I do Britni.”
She didn’t seem bothered by it at all. I just let her go and went to hug the little girl (who I didn’t know, but in my dream, I didn’t know I didn’t know her—you know?)
I told David how good it was to see him. He said, “I saw where you posted on Facebook that Britni would be sitting out here enjoying the sun, so we wanted to stop by.”
That felt perfectly normal in the dream. Childhood memories, Facebook posts, old neighbors, present-day life — all of it just blended together.
Since I didn’t know the billionaire’s name, I said, “Y’all can introduce yourselves,” and she said, “I like gardening and working on cars,” (which honestly made me laugh a little after I woke up, because that sounds less like a billionaire and more like me).
I said, “Um, can ya tell us your name?”
Unfortunately, I don’t remember what she said it was, but anyway…
There were two random dogs there with us, and David said he wanted to meet Baxter. I told him that Baxter was inside, I’d bring him out in a bit, and warned him that Baxter was gonna go wild. New Neighbor said she’d seen him in the yard when new people showed up, and that he did, indeed, love people and would give them lots of kisses.
I began telling New Neighbor about the flowers and bushes Mom used to grow there. Gladiolus. Snowball bushes. The kinds of plants that used to be in everybody’s yard years ago.
Then David pointed over near the steps and asked, “Did you pull it up?”
“What?”
“The donut bush.”
Like that was a completely normal thing to say.
He said, “I told Mom y’all would never have to buy donuts again with that donut bush out here.”
And suddenly I remembered it too–a bush that grew plain cake donuts.
No icing. No glaze. No sprinkles. Just regular cake donuts hanging from the branches in perfect circles with holes in the middle.
And the strangest part was that in the dream, it made complete sense.
I told him no, we would never have pulled up a donut bush. While I’m telling him this, I was thinking, wow, how did this plant grow round donuts with holes in the middle? My fascination wasn’t because it was a donut, but that it was round. With a hole in it.
I said that there must have been something that happened to it outside of our control, because we’d never pull up a donut bush.
There was more stuff to the dream, but this was what stood out the most. It felt familiar in a way I can’t explain. People from old seasons of life showing back up. Britni sitting peacefully in the sunshine. Gardening conversations. Dogs wandering around. Baxter inside the house waiting to come meet everybody because apparently even my subconscious knows he thinks every visitor exists specifically for him.
All of It in One Yard
The whole thing felt like every version of my life got dropped into the same yard at once.
Childhood.
Motherhood.
Caregiving.
Social media/content creating.
Old neighbors.
New people.
Plants my mom used to grow.
Dogs.
And a donut bush.
Before Everything Had to Make Sense
Funny how that works. When you’re little, you just accept things. Of course there could be a donut bush. Of course people stop by unexpectedly. Of course everybody gathers in the yard. Of course somebody’s mom grows gladiolus by the steps.
Maybe that’s why the dream stuck with me. Not because it “meant” something huge—it just reminded me that some of the best parts of life have never made complete sense in the first place.
There are some things in life you protect because they fed something in you beyond hunger.
Wonder. Comfort. Childhood. Magic. The feeling that ordinary places might still contain impossible things.
This morning, just before Robbie left for work, I told him all about my dream. He laughed and said, “I love you. I’ll bring home some Entenmann’s.”
Maybe we all need to hang onto a few dreams about pastry-producing shrubs every now and then—just to keep a little wonder alive.
