Reverie

Today, I woke up with a terrific hangover. I was aided in combating my alcohol-induced, full-body ague with a bowl of fried rice and kimchi, replete with SPAM, dried laver, sauteed mushrooms, and love, cooked to perfection by my wife, the illustrious and praiseworthy XXXX XXX. The cherry on the top: a fried egg, soft yolk. Mix it all together. Creation.

I drank a cup of water and tried to take a nap. Eventually, I fell asleep, but before I did I ran through my memory. It's an old trick that I developed from years of having insomnia. I put a picture in my mind, consider it, and go where it takes me.

In that way, I can be a time traveler. I remembered being 5 or so and sitting at a table-top Pac-Man game on the way home from seeing a movie with my mom and dad; I recalled stealing golf balls from the Par 3 hole nearest to where I grew up, hearing the shouts of players as we terrorized their game and ran like fugitives; I reminisced over going mini putting for my 6th-grade graduation celebration, and, 10 or so years' later, having an epic day of touring possibly every mini putt facility from Burlington to Hamilton with my brother and another close friend.

I remembered myself in my bedroom, playing my Game Boy. Castlevania: The Adventure. God, that was hard. I remembered watching Goodfellas in a friend's basement, and later watching it in the basement of my girlfriend's friend's house as I lied ill with a fever. I remembered my father driving me to Toronto and keeping a bag of chocolate macaroons in the compartment next to the driver's seat. I remembered saying goodbye to my daughter at YYZ as I hunched down to give her a hug and she jumped up to hit me dead in the chin with her forehead to knock me silly. Best hug ever.

I remembered sitting cross-legged on the floor of our family's "TV room," piecemeal eating a bag of hard candy while watching The Muppet Movie. I swallowed a piece of candy whole, and for the rest of the day I was sure that it would be my end; it was only when my mother poured me a cup of hot water later that evening to "melt" it that I was relieved. I was then assured that I would wake up again the next morning.

I remembered walking down the stairs of my high school when I was 16 and seeing a classmate who was walking up. "You're getting big!" he said. And since then I've tried to get small.

I remembered watching Tim Burton's Batman, playing Mega Man until 3 o'clock in the morning, reading The Phantom Tollbooth in my elementary school library on a rainy day...

And then I fell asleep, and I dreamed some more.

When I awoke, I was rejuvenated. Alive. Again.