Rescuing My Ghost Girl
The dreams returned every few months, several times a year. Without fail. For twenty-one years.
I dreamed of the different bedrooms I called my own so long ago: the blue room, the green room, and the brown room. The green was my favorite.
Of the living room’s red velvet wing-back chairs I used to curl up in, reading.
Of the kitchen counter, where I ate breakfast each morning, looking out the window through the pine trees at people passing on foot or bicycle, often on their way to the beach.
Of the family room downstairs where I spent hours watching VHS recordings of American TV shows because they were in English and therefore a link to home.
In that basement room, I cried hearing “The Star-Spangled Banner” during a broadcast of the opening ceremonies of the summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
From ages ten to thirteen, this was the house I lived in, far from my childhood home in the Rockies. This new house was across the ocean, on another continent, in Helsinki.
The recurring dreams started shortly after we returned to the States. In some of them, I visited the house. In others, I still lived there. Often the house appeared different, and I discovered passageways or rooms I hadn’t known…
