I Dreamed a Dream

The reviews are in: everyone I know who has seen Les Miserables loves it. We saw the play live many years ago, and I’m looking forward to seeing it on the big screen, hopefully soon!

The most familiar song from the musical is probably “I Dreamed a Dream.” It’s poignant and beautiful, full of an aching sadness. Sometimes when I’m having a pity party I feel the words sum up my life, but I think it probably actually describes my grandmother. Even my earliest memories of my father’s mother were of a frail, older woman, although she was only in her early sixties, hardly old by today’s standards. But like many in her generation, life wasn’t about romance and parties, but of family and hard work. I am under the impression that she and my grandfather struggled financially, putting in long hours in low-paying jobs. They had their passions and their pastimes, of course, and they had one child, my father, who was both a delight and a conundrum. I think he was quite a handful in his youth.

The three of them built a life near the shore of the Netherland’s North Sea, where there was no end of adventure for my free-spirited father. And then one spring day, after a night of non-stop air strikes, the Germans drove their tanks over the border, and the Netherlands became an occupied nation. 

My father was a teen by this time, fearless in the face of air raids and bombs and public shootings. But I can imagine my grandmother watching her only child and her husband slowly starving to death, and wondering each time they parted company if they would see each other again, or if my father would be hauled off to serve in the military or shot for some reason—or for no reason. And I can imagine her thinking, “I had a dream my life would be so different from this hell I’m living.”

Just weeks before the end of the war, an Allied bomber took out their home, with all of them in it. (The attack was a massive mistake, intended to take out Nazi weapons that had been moved weeks earlier.) Miraculously, they survived, but they lost virtually everything they owned. My siblings and I each have small blue china cups, among the few items to survive the blast. It reminds me of my grandma: frail and beautiful, but able to survive under some pretty grim circumstances. She was much stronger than I ever knew.

In so many areas of the world, even places close to home, mothers face horrible dangers and choices each day. They dream of things many of us take for granted: clean water, adequate food, safe shelter. They dream of a better life for their children, and for the strength to survive long enough to see that better life realized.

So here’s to the new year: may it be a year of dreams come true. And may we see peace in our time.