Do you dream?

I dream often and usually in vivid detail.  I can best describe it as dreaming as if I'm watching a movie - if I stop and talk about it, I can describe so much detail.  And frequently, if I wake up in the night, and go back to sleep and just continue the dream-story.  Unless it is a nightmare - I also have the ability, most of the time, to tell myself to shut it off and stop the nightmare, or I give myself some power in the dream to poof! the demons or monsters into harmless entities.  My husband never remembers his dreams.  He talks in his sleep, and even sings or cries or laughs, but even when I ask him immediately on waking what he was dreaming about, he has no idea.  Not even a feeling - like waking up scared or sad or whatever...

I have also dreamed the future.  Twice that I recall.  I was about 22 when I dreamed I was giving birth to my first child, a daughter.  I remember the naked, slimy little miracle being laid on my chest and naming her.  Any wonder that I insisted on that name when my first child, a daughter, was born some 15 years later?  In fact, I think I told my husband before we were even married that if we had a daughter, her name was non-negotiable.  I told him about the dream and that was the end of that decision making process. 

My husband may have been more open to the "I named my baby in a dream" story because I had another dream some months before that - I dreamed in March that he proposed to me, and I opened the ring box to see the perfect ring.  And it was style I had never seen before.  I remembered it in exact detail and even drew it out for my sister when I told her all about the dream.  I did not tell Sean at the time about my dream, even though we were talking already about getting married etc.  Sean and I did not ring-shop together even once.  We never discussed my taste in jewelry, except that perhaps I had mentioned I prefered white gold over yellow.  I knew in May that he had 'something' up his sleeve and one Friday afternoon I arrived at his house and he showed up with a dozen roses and a pretty little box.  He asked, I said 'yes', and I opened the box to find the ring was an almost exact match to the one in my dream!  He told me he'd been ring shopping a while, and was at the store that day - saw nothing and was about to leave when he spotting this ring in the back of the case and just KNEW it was the one.  Then I told him about my dream.  Pretty cool, huh?

I have also had dreams where my grandparents appeared after they passed away, and my beloved pets too.  Not often, and it is nothing more than a bittersweet presence. 

But most of the time, I dream in weird convoluted stories, populated by random people from my life - sometimes people from the distant past who show up out of the blue and make me wonder. And invariably one figure shows up from time to time and I wake up sad.  It happened again last night...and it got me thinking about dreams and where they come from.