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I don't know where it came from, that phrase. Somewhere in my subconscious. It's imperfect French, which means I might have just snatched at random words, but let me explain.

I had an odd dream just now, until a telephone woke me up. Even now scraps are fizzling away, the way they do after waking, so it's like trying to capture foam off the ocean. But what I do know is, I was visiting home.

At first I was upset because the visit wouldn't be long enough. I wanted to miss classes if it meant staying until I could see my older brother and sister, too, who both live away from home. Mom kept suggesting new ideas for how I could stay, involving a stop on the drive back (for some reason I wasn't just hopping on Greyhound as usual) at my cousins' house to show them some particular toy I had.

As the vacation stretched longer, and I did see my brother and sister again and my family was restored to six people, it began to feel oppressive. I started wondering how much longer the vacation would be. And Mom came up with more and more ideas for how I could stay, and in memory of how anxious I'd been to do just that, I agreed, figuring I could convince myself I was happy if I stayed long enough.

The family was too big. My brother and sister, both regarded as adults, were too bright and singular for me. They arrived and eclipsed my college-girl maturity, so that once again my father was talking to them as adults and treating me as a child. It felt like a slowly building hand on my shoulders pushing me down until I was hunched over in my car seat, jammed in a seat next to my little brother, tears running down my face. I didn't know why I wept, but no one even noticed I was crying.

I fought to prove all I'd learned, all I'd acquired away from home, in a desperate effort to be worthwhile again, the way I was to my relatives and parents during my last visit home, when my brother and sister weren't there. I felt childish for struggling to show off, as if my self-knowledge of how I'd grown and changed should be enough. I felt conceited for waving my singing and writing like a bright banner for praise, the way I hated myself for doing in junior high and highschool.

I realized I'd forgotten my bags at home, so now couldn't possibly go back to school until I'd retrieved them, and my eyes filled again.

Then we got on the subject of a certain song. I started singing it- it was something called "Quatre des vies d�vinez," only to the tune of La vie en rose. I was expecting praise of my voice and marvels at how much I'd improved, but instead my sister just asked who sang it. I told her "Edith Piaf" and started talking about how Edith was the symbol of French singing worldwide, despite the many good French opera singers, blah blah... even though I knew absolutely nothing that I was saying. I was just making it up. And my family was nodding, but my sister caught my eye and I knew she knew I was lying.

We arrived at wherever we'd been driving, and climbed out, and I descended the stairs slowly, still hearing Quatre des vies d�vinez, and suddenly I was standing on a roof, staring down the slick rain-spattered shingles to the party below, where people mingled and laughed, and saw my luggage which I thought I'd left at home, piled neatly on the roof next to me.

Then the phone jangled and I woke, so disoriented with the strains of the nonexistent French song in my head that I glanced at my watch and couldn't even remember whether it was three o' clock in the morning or the afternoon.

The words I hatched out of nowhere literally mean "four of the lives, guess." And "guess" is in the imperative form, like a command. Rearranged to make sense, it could be "Guess four of the lives."

Four lives. Does it mean anything, or did the cheese in my sandwich at lunch do something weird to my brain?

It's strange how sometimes dreams are so clearly manifestations of what we want to happen, and other times they're so thickly woven and symbolic, you could puzzle out multiple meanings for the rest of your life. Didn't even realize I was deep enough to have such symbolism in me, you know?

Four lives. Guess four lives. I can tell this is going to hover in the back of my brain for a while.

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