BY MARK HALL
“Waking consciousness is dreaming―but dreaming constrained by external reality.”
― Oliver Sacks
I don’t usually watch home shows on TV, but when a popular program traveled to Georgia to remodel its next Dream House, I was captured. “Enter for a chance to win this waterfront home on St. Simons Island, Georgia.” When I was growing up, my family vacationed at St. Simons. It’s the place I return to from time to time so many years later, to be comforted by the familiar, to feel at home. After I won the Dream House, just a few hours’ drive from my home, I’d visit every weekend.
Contestants could register to win twice a day, every day, for several months, and so I did. I needed no reminder. Logging onto the website became my morning ritual. With coffee in hand, I studied every photo of the Dream House. I watched and re-watched every video clip. I savored the full episode of the remodel, from start to finish. By the time the prize was announced, I had learned every corner of that house, from its distressed driftwood oak floors to its vaulted ceiling covered in pecky cypress. Its three bedrooms, four baths, and two wet bars would be perfect for me. It even had a matching dog house. Sure, it was over-decorated, with every surface covered in knick-knacks. But that could be easily remedied. First, I’d take photos, cataloguing the location of each item, so I could put them all back just so, if I chose. Then I’d sweep the surfaces clean, storing all the assorted accessories in the neatly-designed, well-organized garage.
When I won, I planned, I wouldn’t rent out the Dream House to strangers, as most people do with their vacation homes on the island. Instead, when I wasn’t visiting there myself, I’d offer it to friends and family. “You look tired. How about a week at the beach? No, really, take the key. Enjoy. No, no, it doesn’t cost anything. Just text the cleaning service when you leave.” Keys might be too much trouble though. Maybe I’d put a coded keypad on the door, instead, like those I’d seen on some of the rentals I’d occupied at St. Simons over the years. Of course there would be a cleaning service. And a yard service too. The $250,000 cash, given as part of the grand prize, would pay for that. But I hadn’t yet decided about the Honda Pilot, another part of the prize. Too big for me. Maybe I could ask to swap it for an Accord instead. Or maybe I’d sell it to help pay the taxes. With a grand prize of $1.6 million, I could expect a hefty tax bill, and so I needed to plan ahead. Maybe I’d have to rent it out after all. But not right away. First, I’d just enjoy the Dream House for a while.
Day by day, as I became more and more enamored of the Dream House, winning it seemed inevitable to me. And so I bought some new clothes. After a busy week at work, I reasoned, I’d want to get on the road quickly on Friday afternoons. I wouldn’t want to waste time packing a bag. I’d need to have some basics there at St. Simons, in the newly remodeled master closet. Just a few things.
Early one morning, my brother Joe texted. He shared my obsession, registering to win the Dream House each day himself in order to improve our chances: “Did you see that they announced the winner?” I was dismayed, genuinely shocked, that I hadn’t won the Dream House. Afterwards, I couldn’t bear to log on to see the photos and video clips again. I tried to put the house out of my mind. But the Dream House kept its hold on me. While you may live in a house, it also lives in you. Although I had never set foot in the Dream House, it had fully occupied my imagination. Now it plagued my mind, haunted my dreams.
* * *
Although I’ve not lived there for thirty-five years, I have a recurring dream about the house my grandparents built on Rawson Circle, in a small town in rural South Georgia where I grew up. Built in 1939, the house is not grand, originally just three modest bedrooms, two and a half baths. But its two-story white brick Colonial Revival architecture makes it appear finer than it is. The deep brick front porch, which runs the length of the house, is two stories, held up by four stately columns. My grandmother couldn’t decide between windows and doors, so the wide front door in the center is flanked by French doors on each side, one pair opening out from a formal dining room, the other, on the opposite side, from an equally formal living room. Years later, when my parents converted the garage to a den and added more bedrooms and baths to accommodate five children, my mother began referring to the original structure as “The Big House.” We were not allowed to play in The Big House. We were not to sit on the plush couch in the living room. Its deep goose-down cushions would leave a tell-tale indentation.
In every place I’ve ever lived since I left that house after high school, I crave more light. I seem to be trying to get back to the bedroom of my childhood at the top of the stairs. This same room had once been my mother’s childhood bedroom. Its gold wallpaper, with what I thought of as a snowflake pattern, matching gold settee, and gold carpet made it fit for a princess―or a sissy-boy like me. It was bathed in light, with tall double-hung windows on all four sides. As a child, I took this abundance of light for granted. Now, my husband, Todd, complains when I move from our shared bedroom to the guest room at the opposite end of the house in the early morning hours. I nod to the light pouring in from the east-facing window where I sip coffee. “It’s brighter in here,” I point out.
When my mother was a child, a local artist named Mildred Huie, who later became well known for her art on St. Simons Island, lived at the opposite end of the block. To make money, she would set up her easel in someone’s front yard and paint a quick watercolor of their house. Then she’d ring the bell and offer to sell the painting to the homeowner. This painting now hangs in my study, a reminder of the house as it looked in my grandparents’ day. It’s a good likeness, capturing the light that shines through the loblolly pines that dot the wide lawn, their needles sharp, precise.
In my dream, my grandparents’ house has been remodeled, the kitchen updated. I hardly recognize it. I walk through, touring it, lingering over each change, recalling what the house once looked like. Everything about it seems much smaller than I remember. I climb the stairs and return to the shining bedroom of my childhood where I bathe in the sunlight. What is the purpose of this dream of my childhood home?
* * *
What are dreams, and why do we have them in the first place? Recent insights from neuroscience offer some clues. The content of dreams, it seems, varies, depending on the stage of sleep in which the dream occurs. Their purpose appears to be related to consolidating and organizing memories, connecting them to our emotional drives. During our waking hours memories are stored in the hippocampus, which is responsible for long-term memory. While we sleep, memories are transferred to another region of the brain, the cerebral cortex, tasked with cognition and processing information. Humans are emotional creatures, and our emotions drive our behavior. Dreams reflect the emotional and biological conflicts that animate our waking hours, providing hypothetical solutions for resolving those conflicts. For decades now, as I have moved from state to state, from coast to coast, I’m revisited by the same dream of my grandparents’ house. What conflict am I working to resolve in this nighttime search for home, the bright bedroom of my youth? What is the emotional drive that returns me again and again to this desperate pursuit of light? And what is the hypothetical solution offered up by this dream?
* * *
Sometimes, upon waking from this dream, I imagine going back to my grandparents’ home, knocking on the door, explaining my connection to the house, and asking the current residents if I can just look around for a bit. Maybe then something would come to me. Maybe then I could figure out why this house, this dream, dogs me so. But I don’t do it. I’m too shy. Dropping in on strangers seems like an imposition. That, and I can’t imagine explaining my dream motivation without sounding crazy.
Like any house, my grandparents’ home is filled with memories, some happy, others not. Always when I think of that house, I think of why we moved there in the first place, to live with my grandfather after my grandmother was killed in a fiery car crash one summer afternoon. Midday, unexpectedly, my father returned home early from work. As he rounded the corner to the backyard, where my brother John and I played in the sprinkler, I was struck by his silence. Normally, my father whistled a tune whenever he returned home. Even at five-years-old I knew right away that something was terribly wrong. Moments later, from the open kitchen window, I heard my mother scream. The next day, we packed up and moved to Georgia, never to return to the little house where we lived in South Carolina. While I was thrilled to be in the company of my grandfather every day, Grandmama’s absence cast a long shadow on their house, which lingers even now.
* * *
Recently, when I learned that my grandparents’ house had come on the market again, I fantasized about winning the lottery so that I could buy back the family home, then give it as a gift to my sister, Charlene. She still lives in the town where we grew up. She’s rented a house there for twenty years, probably paying enough by now to settle its mortgage several times over. Finally, she would own her own home, which I could then visit. Maybe she’d let me stay in my sunny room at the top of the stairs.
Then Mother called to tell me that the house had been sold. The new owners, she added, were African American. Now the town where I grew up remains as racially segregated as it was fifty years ago, so I wondered how the White neighbors would react to a Black family moving into the Churchwell house. Mother told me they were outraged, but not because the new owners were African American, they insisted, but because the house had been sold for less than market value. Even if that were true, it couldn’t be easy for the first Black family in the neighborhood. While I smiled at the thought of an African American family now living in the Big House, I knew that it took great courage to integrate Rawson Circle. It would take even more courage to stay there.
Although the house had changed hands multiple times since I moved away, without notice from me, this time was different. This family, I thought, needed a special welcome―from the original owners. That’s when I got the idea to give Mildred Huie’s watercolor portrait of the house to the new residents next time I was in town. “I still dream about this house,” I would tell them. “I hope you’ll be happy here. You should have this.” I’d hand over the painting, then tell the story of the artist knocking on Grandmama’s door, offering to sell the painting to her for fifty dollars. Maybe we’d laugh together about living in the Big House.
My mission, of course, is a selfish one. I hope the new owners will invite me in, let me look around. Maybe I’d tell them about my recurring dream. Maybe they’d let me visit my old room.
* * *
To shake myself loose from the grip of the Dream House, I resolved that when I next visited St. Simons, I would not go see the house. It was gone. Instead, I’d keep to the opposite end of the island and avoid its neighborhood all together. What was the point, now that my Dream House belonged to someone else? Then, on the day before I was set to return home after a week there, on my Facebook feed, a listing appeared. For the Dream House. The winners had apparently opted for the cash prize instead. The Dream House was now for sale. I still had a chance. If I won the lottery, then I could buy the Dream House. Granted, winning the lottery was a long shot. But that’s not how I thought about it. Each time I hold a lottery ticket in my hand, I also hold a clear vision of winning the prize, with just as much certainty as I’d felt when I bought new clothes in order to prepare for spending weekends at the Dream House.
With so little time left before the end of my vacation, I would have to act quickly. First, I bought a lottery ticket. Then I phoned the realtor to arrange a tour. I didn’t want to seem like a looky-loo, so I pretended not to know the house had been featured on TV. “No, I, I, don’t follow home shows,” I lied, when the realtor brought it up. “It’s been on TV? Huh.”
Candy, as she introduced herself, was keen to bring me up to speed. She was excited, as though she were letting me in on a secret everyone else already knew. She talked for a long while. When she complained about all the looky-loos who phoned day and night, angling for a walk-through, I sympathized. “That must be maddening,” I said. “How do you manage to get any work done?” Then she explained that the show’s executives had strict rules about showing the house. I’d have to have permission in advance, because each showing was carefully staged. They kept such tight control that even Candy herself was not allowed a key to the Dream House.
But I was determined to get in, and so I pressed. “I’m only here for a short time. I have to return home tomorrow.” Candy wasn’t swayed. Then, out of nowhere, a lie took shape. “It’s just that, well, I’m, uh, looking for a place for my mother,” I said. “She’s going to retire soon, and while she’s out of the country, she asked me to look for a house for her at St. Simons while I’m here.” As I talked, my confidence grew. “You see,” I continued, “when she was growing up, she had a beloved aunt who lived here, so Mom has fond memories of the island. She sent me on this house-hunting errand, but I’ve been putting it off all week. Now, well, I just need to see something so I can report back. I think this house would be perfect for her.” Candy listened and nodded through the phone. I could hear her softening.
“Let me make a call,” she said. “I’ll see if I can get you in.” When the phone rang a short time later, Candy asked, “What does she do, your mother?”
Quickly, the lie ballooned. A scientific article I’d read recently about the Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries in Croatia came to mind. “Uh, she’s a, uh, a marine biologist. She studies something about the microbiology of the Adriatic Sea. I never quite understand the details,” I confided to Candy. “She’s a researcher in, uh, Split, Croatia. Well, her grad students do most of the work now,” I explained. “But she’s got to give it up soon. She’s turning seventy-five this summer. She’s returning to the States to have a hip replaced and needs a place to recover. A house like this one, on the ground floor, would be perfect for her.”
Candy was sympathetic, but, no, the show’s executives would not relax their rules. To view the house, she explained, I’d first need a letter from a bank, verifying that Mother could actually afford the 1.6 million-dollar price tag. This stopped me cold. I knew Mother couldn’t afford a mortgage on the matching dog house, much less the Dream House itself. But I tried to appear cool, unfazed, like I understood that this is how the world turns for the one-percent. “Right, yes, oh, yes, of course. I’ll try to reach Mother,” I offered. “Maybe she can FAX you something. I don’t know. She can be hard to track down this time of year. She’s probably on a boat somewhere. In the meantime, do you think I could drop by just to take a look around the house, if I can’t get permission to get in?”
Candy hesitated. “Sure, I think that would be alright,” she relented, “just to look around the exterior.”
I had a car, but I didn’t want to draw attention to myself by pulling up and parking in the circular drive in front of the Dream House. The neighbors were probably well past fed up with all the traffic generated by the now-famous home. Then I remembered the bicycle I’d seen abandoned behind the lighthouse, just a short walk from the cottage I’d rented. I set off to see if it was still there. It was. I looked around. There were a few people scattered here and there, but no one appeared to belong to the bike. It hadn’t moved since I’d first noticed it there several days before. I hopped on and peddled in the direction of the Dream House.
By the time I reached the opposite end of the island, where the house was located in a quiet, posh neighborhood, I was winded, giddy. From a tiny cottage rented for seventy-five dollars a night, on a stolen bicycle, I stood before the Dream House. My house. Its white shake siding and contrasting black trim gleamed in the sun. The new tin roof sparkled. It really was perfect. I felt the familiar covetous tug as I crept around to the backyard to view the pool, the shaded deck overlooking a cool, dark lagoon, the fire pit, the matching dog house.
I snapped a few photos and peered in every window. As I pressed my face to the glass, the morning sun poured into the master bedroom. Inside, its deep bay window cupped a cozy reading nook. I could see myself there, quite clearly, curled up with a book in one of the rattan lounge chairs, bathed in the morning light, as in the golden bedroom of my childhood. For an instant, the television Dream House merged together in my mind with my grandparents’ home on Rawson Circle.
I considered breaking in to take a few selfies in the master bed, enveloped by sumptuous linens and decorative pillows the color of the surrounding live oaks, dripping with moss. But I knew from the videos that the Dream House was, of course, equipped with a state-of-the-art security system. This is as close as I would ever get to the Dream House.
But perhaps I could take a quick swim in the pool. What about the neighbors, I worried. I looked around. I listened. The neighborhood was silent as a tomb. Given my luck with lottery tickets, I knew that this would be my only opportunity. And the long bike ride over had been stifling, I reminded myself. A quick dip would make the return trip to my tiny rental cottage more bearable. I gazed out over the sparkling water. In an instant, I shucked off my shorts and tee-shirt, then, as quietly as I could, I slipped beneath the surface, like a dream, like coming home.
Mark Hall is a professor of writing, rhetoric, and digital studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. His creative nonfiction has appeared in Flashquake, The Timberline Review, Lunch Ticket, Passengers Journal, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Hippocampus, and others.
Process Note: This essay weaves together the stories of two very different dream houses, which, as it turns out, have something powerful in common.