I’ve always been a science-minded guy, but my studies have revealed that at the quantum level, the universe seems to operate on ‘some kind of magic’, so who knows? But I digress.
My niece, who I haven’t seen for many years, sent my son Aaron a text that she had a message for me from my late wife. It was so sweet, I thought I’d share it:
I’m not sure if the dream means anything, but it sure sounds like something Jody would come up with. I’d like to think she’s trying to tell me: don’t worry about me, I made it up to heaven.
michaeljordahl 
As I write about and am writing a novel about — dreams are portals into alternate universes–physics says it’s possible. Everything about life is “magic.” There are only two ways to live your life: one is that nothing is a miracle and the other is that everything is a miracle.” Albert Einstein
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I concur with Einstein!!
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Pardon my ignorance: Do you have a family tradition of calling your granddaughter your niece? Is Aaron, your son the father of your niece or it’s someone else?
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My grandniece through marriage? I don’t know,but I’m trying to (politely) leave her identity out of the post.
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Rather than looking for exact identity or name of a person here: i want to remove the confusion created by the narration and message. In the message : Aaron’s mother or your wife is being addressed as the sender of the message. Why then does the medium who dreamed of her call you(Mike) her uncle? Is uncle a term used for grandfather as well?
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No, she’s my wife’s brother’s daughter’s daughter, and she calls me uncle.
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Now clear. 🙂🙏
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Why in the world do you care– or does it matter– who she is??
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Strange: why do you read anything if you don’t understand it?
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Who she is is totally irrelevant to the piece! She could have been the meter maid. Ha. It just doesn’t matter to the story!
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What i am trying to learn from the given text is : how relationships are interpreted in a culture i am not familiar with. I agree with you that piece was about a dream. What is a meter maid by the way?
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Ah, I see. A language barrier. Sorry. Well, a meter maid is someone who gives tickets to people parking illegally in cities (I don’t live in a city). But suffice it to say in order to understand that text, who the dreamer is really isn’t important to the story at all. She could have been anyone who passed this dream on, but she did know his wife, so that might make it either more or less significant depending on your view of supernatural phenomena. 🙂
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To be honest: how seriously an author takes a piece of artwork is all about the details unless they were passing entire piece off as fiction in which case reader would not be as interested as if it were nonfiction.
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Actually that’s true of both fiction AND nonfiction. Details matter, but they don’t all matter the same. And in that case, fiction or nonfiction, who passed this dream on to the author just isn’t earth shattering. In fact, the only important thing about the dream at all is the author’s reaction to the dream itself. The whole thing would be meaningless if it had no meaning for the author–but it did. I’m a fiction writer, though I’ve published a lot of creative nonfiction. And yes, details matter, sometimes what gets left out of a piece is as important as what gets put in –Ernest Hemingway’s iceberg theory. In my reading this bit of nonfiction, it mattered only slightly who passed this dream on to the author — if at all. It rang true and “magical” to the author–in many cultures “dreams” hold even more reality to the dreamer than our daily perception of “reality.” They inform all experience for many people. The author was simply observing how much about life can’t be easily explained. Which of course makes it worthwhile to live… It’s nice you are reading so carefully.
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I agree with most of what you say but to me the person conveying the message is as important as the one interpreting it. You state it as a fact that author’s reaction should be the only thing which matters to a reader–i beg to differ here. It’s a reader’s prerogative to read a published work however they want. I haven’t expressed surprise about your interest in my questions as you have : but the author has clearly resolved the matter which was only a slight difference from our culture: grandfather is not called uncle over here: that’s what perplexed me but no more. Hence everything is resolved. Peace ✌️
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Wow, my post actually sparked a little controversy–and peaceful resolution.
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