By Dawn M. Sanders
Night before last I slept well; a minor celebration when sleep often plays an elusive game of hide and seek.
I’m a night creature; if I sleep too early I wake up too early and then the rest of the night is trying to catch more sleep. So Wednesday night I pushed myself to stay up later as I often do, to finally capture that precious commodity and allow my body and mind to rest.
Slipping into bed just before 2a.m, I went straight to sleep and, there was only 1 disruptive break for the toilet instead of 3.
The dream. So there I found myself on a submarine – I had never been on one before, so how bizarre!
Inside it was laid out like a small bus, with rows of seats either side of a narrow aisle and a low ceiling. The window was one long rounded strip wrapping around the outer perimeter, so people could easily see into the darkness of the deep water we were in.
I sat at the end of a long row of seats, a woman in the middle of me and a guy sitting next to the window on the inside.
I spoke to the woman, I wanted to know what she could see outside into the darkened world we were in.
I guess there were lights on the outside of the vessel, which seemed to light up glowing bright anemones, banks of brilliant coral and other dwellers of the deep, swept past the sub, as if in a parade of untouchables whose world we were disrupting.
The lady sitting between me and the young guy by the window finally got up – she was tired of describing things to me.
So, I just lapsed into an aimless conversation with the young American.
As the sub glided along the ocean floor, bumping and going down steep inclines into even deeper canyons, it seemed to be even darker which, was scary.
Inside the sub got more and more stuffy, claustrophobic and I wanted to get out, but couldn’t.
We glided along with the drone of the muffled engine permeating the slosh of the water against the body of the vessel and under water pressure.
I was there, really there – wondering how I would ever get home, see the surface again, my son, my life on land, I needed to get out.
I woke up, got out of bed, drew back the curtains to a new grey day – I was home, back in my warm, safe home.