I wrote down as best as I could remember the dream I had the other night; one of only a few lately and only the second one I can recall where I was accepted as a girl. It was almost painful to wake up since it's likely one of the nicest dreams I've had in my several years on this planet. Dreams are such wonderful things until they end. Then they can be so sad and disappointing, since you know that that’s all they are and ever will be.

As far as everyone goes? On my Dad's side, Aunt Chick was my favorite. She was pretty but seemed so sad for so long. She lost a son, my cousin Mike, when he was hit by a truck while riding his bike. She was never the same after that. I don’t ever recall her smiling.

Aunt Marie seemed to be angry most of the time, but she wasn’t really mean but rather just abrupt with us when we visited. She had married late; an arrangement made by my grandmother, she married a widower with two daughters. My grandmother had forced her to wed him instead of her true love. Years later, after her husband passed, she met her old flame while shopping. A whirlwind courtship ended with a joyous marriage cut short mere months later as he passed away.

On Mommy's side, it really wasn't any better. Aunt Trudy and Aunt Alice always seemed so troubled; both of them for different but equally disappointing reasons. Aunt Trudy endured decades of strife while married to a very well-meaning alcoholic. Only two of her three daughters duplicated her sad mistake while her youngest was spared that heartache; living her life developmentally challenged. Aunt Alice found the love of her life in a younger man; a sailor who swiftly departed at the birth of my cousin Alison.

Aunt Marge never seemed to be quite there even when she was, if you know what I mean. Her daughter, my cousin Barbara, lives in a nursing home; afflicted with Alzheimer’s. I think I wanted to be just like her because she was so pretty, but I think I identified with her for so many other reasons. She had finally found happiness with a man who loved her after her own trials with an alcoholic husband. It was as bittersweet as a love could be as she's no longer able to recognize him.

Mommy hardly ever laughed until late in life. She was just like her sisters in so many ways; both in temperament and in living a childhood where she never received the things she needed and got all the things a child should never receive. Every single one from her sisters and their children but also to her to Joann and me…

Joann … we were so alike in so many ways… ways that she grew to hate for my sake, but in a way that brought us closer as we faced each others hurts, almost back to back in every sense. I miss her so often even though she's been gone nearly ten years.

And the sad thing, apart from my cousin Barbara is that all of them. Every one of my aunts and my Mom and my sister all succumbed to cancer. I've never dreamed about any of my kin other than Joann and Mommy so it was such a surprise in and of itself. But the hard part of it all was knowing that none of them will have ever met me, so to speak even though they all knew me as part of my whole self. That saddens me a bit.

But here’s the thing…. As sad as I was that the dream ended, it really hasn’t ended at all. Maybe the dream is just their way of letting me know that it’s really more than okay that I’m the way I am. I know Joann would have been happy if she knew, but I suspect that she did know, just like Mommy, how much of Andrea I really am, even if none of us knew me by that name.

So here’s to dreams. May they always end happily ever after!