Meeting A Grunwald

כ"א בניסן תשס"ז

Earlier this morning, I dreamt.

I was on a school bus traveling with a group going somewhere. Somewhere turned out to be a gathering in which the participants attended learning sessions like seminars, but they weren't business seminars.

Anyway, on the bus I was seated in the right aisle, in the middle of the bus. An unknown man was sitting in the same seat. I had the impression that we were both "seated" there for a purpose - it was almost as if it was being determined if we could "accept" one another's presence.

The man sat next to the window and I sat on the aisle side of the seat. Oddly, I couldn't sit at the edge of the seat. I was sitting in the middle of the seat we shared. I felt uncomfortable sitting like that, in the middle of the shared seat, and I was intruding on the man's space as well - although he didn't say anything - but try as I might, I couldn't move over. I couldn't move from the middle of the seat. I was stuck there in the middle. We talked small "neighborly" talk, the content I don't recall.

We arrived at the destination and everyone exited the bus, each going his or her own way among the crowd waiting for the seminars-symposia to begin. My mother was with me at this point.

Everyone went through a buffet foodline to get a tray of food to eat while sitting through the seminar lectures. I had trouble finding a clean tray among the stacks, but I finally found one and gathered up a plate of food (fried chicken) and a beverage (cola). I had to remove several large ice cubes to get enough liquid into the cup to drink with a meal. Then, my mother and I went into the big conference room where the lectures were about to begin. We sat down.

The same man from the bus approached my mother and I. He introduced himself to my mother and I as (I missed the first name) Grunwald. I wondered silently if we were related (Grunwald is a family name in my ancestry). The man indicated that I should go ahead and eat because he somehow realized I hadn't eaten in quite awhile and was starving. So, I ate while he talked with my mother until the class was about to begin. At that time, he headed back towards his own seat.

I woke up.