The Jaguar

Dreams are an interesting part of my nights, always have been ever since I was about ten years old. Last night was no exception. The dream placed our house in a big, dusty field in the middle of summer. I was checking on our green house and unlike our greenhouse in waking hours, this one was dusty, full of run down plants and flowers. It was eerily quiet inside, until I noticed a rustling behind the dead Morning Glory flowers. Then the rustling became accompanied by a slow moving dark shadow. A large dark shadow. I froze in my tracks. What was that? Just as I thought the motion was reminding me of a big slithering snake, the shadow morphed into a menacing, snarling jaguar staring me down with a throaty growl and hypnotic, fierce eyes. Instead of wanting to run, I decided instantly that I would not. The jaguar walked up to me as if in slow motion and stared me down. I did not look away and stared right back mesmerized rather than afraid. I remember thinking: " I know he is looking right at my throat, and I don't care if he kills me, I am not cowering, I am not moving and I am not running. " and I didn't. The jaguar screamed in my face, and I did nothing. Out of the blue, I suddenly decided to put my arms around him. I thought he would tear me apart. But that is when the dream got interesting. The jaguar started purring and put his head on my shoulder. He accepted me. For the rest of the dream we were friends, and I brought him meat I thawed out of the freezer. I remember thinking : " I wonder how Michael and Nicholas will react to the jaguar, and he to them? " As it turned out, my husband and son were cool with the big cat, and he seemed right away at ease with them. I remember thinking what a strange place this was for a jaguar to wander into, a big, dusty field in what looked like the South somewhere during a very hot, dry summer. What I liked about the dream was all the space I had around me. The houses, including ours, were very small, but the open space all around us more than made up for the cramped living quarters. The jaguar and I roamed the fields seemingly outside the boundaries of time and hardly needed words or commands to communicate. Like I was part jaguar and he was part human. I woke up feeling elated, like I had really been wherever the dream had taken me, and really had been hot breath to hot breath with a live, fierce, beautiful jaguar who for one endless, glorious night was my best friend, my soul mate.