Your wildest dreams

I've just received a quiz entitled Your wildest dreams. You must rank ten options:

Never grow old
Time travel
Marry the one you love
Be a movie star
Win millions
Be a famous athlete
Find the perfect mate
Travel to outer space
Be the president
Date your favorite star

Rankings are usually difficult for me to establish; I usually don't think in terms of order relationships, but of equivalence relationships. Well, I'd like to travel to outer space, and I find time travel attractive (paradoxes aside). As for marriage or perfect mates, I'm done. Never growing old could be partially desirable, in terms of health, but not in terms of eternal life. And as for the rest... I think I would possibly reject them. Yes, winning millions included.

And I find myself thinking about my wildest dreams. And about dreams in general. And I think about mom.

Mom is quite an intelligent person, and someone I admire. She's rather bad at remembering places or understanding maps, just as bad as I am remembering people's names. But she's good at almost everything else.

If mom were to be born again, I know for sure she would have two wild dreams. Wild dream number one: exercising. Wild dream number two: studying foreign languages.

If, for that second life, she got nice legs, she would wear miniskirts with long coats. Probably always.

One of her dreams was to see Venice. And my love, my mom and I traveled to Aveiro, a small Venice in Portugal. I wanted her to see that life hadn't ended. That lots of wonderful things were still to happen. And it was a real dream. She doesn't always remember the correct name of those places, but she remembers every image, every feeling.

But her biggest dream was to see Venice, the one and only. And that one we achieved together. One of my wildest dreams was to convince mom that some of our wildest dreams can become true. I cannot give her the long legs of a lingerie model, or a new birth. But I could travel to Venice. It was only my third flight, and her first one; but we got there. And now we both recall it like... a dream, yes.

I didn't want mom to see those dreams come true as an exception. I wanted her to think that beeing happy was possible, and that more unforgettable moments were awaiting in the years to come. So we travelled to Amsterdam (sort of a northern Venice). And it was... a dream.

There's a thought that kills me: that my mother is convinced that every dream become true is the last one. No matter how many new challenges we overcome together; one can always think that the previous one is the last one. There's nothing I can do about that feeling, apart from denying it.

Being a movie star, a famous athlete, the president, winning millions... Those are empty dreams. I think about mom's dreams. I think about how fortunate we are, being allowed to do sports, to learn languages, to wear miniskirts with long coats.

And more important yet, being allowed to have dreams and not having to give up.