Daddy Teaches His Daughter A New Lesson

Self-Portrait, oils, 1981
It's not yet twelve hours since I awoke. I have trouble waking; it's so easy to go back to sleep when I sleep so badly during the night. The kitten sleeps peacefully either at my head or by my hands and dreamland comes so easily. It's hard to leave.
Last night my father in some way, took me to visit 'the other side'. Dad's been gone since 1989; I guess, especially when he was old he was as close to me as he could manage. He wasn't a person who could bare his soul or be affectionate--I doubt he would have felt comfortable trying. But he used to walk up the street to our house and visit most every day. A few years ago, while I was experiencing a lot of psychic ability, I used to sense Dad touching my face or kidding around with me. He'd changed greatly. Since then, he's visited regularly in my dreams and I'm very clear about how much he loves me. All my family has visited during my dreams and I invite them every night. At times, I felt I traveled there to visit them and I've been asking to do that. So last night Dad took me there and convinced me not to ask again. He held my hand and seemingly did not want to let me go and it was a creepy boring place. I wrenched my hand away and ran to a small group of young women 'waiting for an elevator'--I think that was just a metaphor. My idea is Dad was showing me a part of his reality, but the images, including the elevator, were simply expressed using images I could understand. Anyway, I spoke with the women on the elevator, who yes were all content being 'on the other side' and weren't sympathetic to my worries about leaving my family behind. (One said she was only fifteen when she died and how did I think her family felt about that? I empathized.) I took the risk of staying on after they exited, hoping I could return to my life.
I found myself at the mass transportation terminus--Bridge and Pratt here in Philly--with no identification, money, or cell phone. Somehow, I was steady enough to approach a police officer with my plight excepting I didn't share the real way I'd gotten there. I lost the officer because he walked too fast and got into the wrong car. It was a long way home with some disappointments but I knew I'd walk home, across 20 miles of Philadelphia, to Harry. I thought that was a meaningful ending and an important lesson.