When the Fog Lifts

 

Photo credit: Robsalot (that's me!)

It was the strangest thing, somehow, against all odds, I had managed to end up at a place where I was actually happy. I wasn’t sure how it happened, but I decided it was best not to question it. For so long I had always been struggling against something, and to suddenly realize that life was finally coming together, and maybe I could actually relax. Not too much though, after all, there was still work to do, but it was work I enjoyed, so could it really be called work then?

I had lucked into the job, it was a whirlwind of events that had landed me right where I had always wanted to be, running a little inn in the countryside. I stood behind a big wooden front desk every day, with a view across the green rolling hills, and I would sip my coffee and just take it all in. This was the me I was meant to be. Not trapped in a big city, where it seemed the sun hardly ever managed to find its way through the maze of tall buildings to the street below. Where most of the hours of the day were spent trapped inside an office, disconnected from the rhythms of nature, instead trapped in the monotony of meaningless office politics.

Sure, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses being an inn keeper, though out in the country there were no tall buildings to block the sunshine, and obviously there were roses in the gardens that surrounded the inn, but there were problems too. Being in customer service isn’t always easy, there are a lot of quirky characters in the world, but there were a lot of strange people I had worked with in my last job too, the only difference was, the customers at the inn wanted to be there (for the most part) while the people in the office, not so much.

I had stayed up too late the night before. There had been a wedding at the inn, and I had been running around all night, making sure everything was just right. It was going to take a lot of coffee to get me through the day. I was on my third cup. Somehow I had made it through the morning check-out rush, and after I watched the last car turn from the long drive out on to county road 92, I decided to relax for a few minutes in one of the lobby chairs.

Well I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew I was waking up, only I wasn’t in the blue and green plaid armchair in the lobby of the inn, I was in my bed, the one that was in my apartment in the city. I opened my eyes, and I saw her, my wife. That’s right, I was married. At that moment she woke up too, “Hi Bob,” she said, smiling.

“Oh Emily,” I replied, “I just had the strangest dream.”