Look for your dreams in day-to-day life

There was a time when my mother nurtured a (supposedly secret) dream of reclining gracefully on a chaise lounge, surrounded by a bevy of adoring grandchildren who would address her (with straight faces!) as 'Mama Inez'. Fast forward a decade or two and you will find my mum sitting on the floor between two grubby, but undoubtedly adoring, great-grandchildren, engrossed in the gripping escapades of Thomas and Friends or (wo)manfully struggling to follow their first steps into cyberspace as they prod - rather more enthusiastically than skilfully! - the iPad touchscreen, all the while piping 'Look GanGan!' at ear-piercing pitch. Does she hanker after her Doyenne of the Deep South dream? I have no idea - after all, I am not supposed to know about it! But I do know this: she is never happier than when she is getting down and dirty with the rugrats of both this generation and the last, all of whom have called her GanGan from the get-go.

The thing is, we all have a One Day List of things to do, places to go, and people to meet and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! Living without dreams is like driving at night without headlights. It's just that life has a predictable way of being totally unpredictable and there is a real danger of focusing all our energy on yearning after the as-yet unfulfilled List while we miss out on the joy that is in our midst. Allow me to give you a rather humdrum example of this principle in action...

Yesterday it fell to me to take my 18-month-old granddaughter to visit the family doctor. My daughter was unable to get away from work and it was my early afternoon so off I set, happily planning a 'girls' afternoon' at the Mall after we'd paid calls with the medico, where we would fill the inevitable prescription and then reward ourselves with a spot of retail therapy and perhaps an age-appropriate beverage - it's never too soon to start instilling bad habits. Of course, real life got in the way of my plans and somewhere between Musgrave and Adelaide Tambo Roads my humble chariot was transformed into the Vomit Comet and I came close to setting a new record for the trip as the essence of Eau de Vom filled the air...did I mention that the mercury hovered at the 36 degree mark all day yesterday? It was a pale and tight-lipped Nana who pulled into the parking-lot at the doctor's rooms, flung open her door and greedily sucked in a lungful of fresh air. Having (narrowly) avoided adding to the digestive disaster, I turned my attention to my darling granddaughter who sat patiently in a bucket seat that was somewhat fuller than it had been when we started out. A packet of wet wipes later, she was visibly cleaner and marginally more fragrant and I was the reverse. At that point I wistfully surrendered any hope of accomplishing the projected plan for the rest of the afternoon. There were larger issues at stake - like whether we would be permitted to enter the doctor's rooms, redolent as we were of semi-digested dairy products. Then I felt a small hand slip into mine and a pair of large blue eyes looked trustingly up at me over a button nose that was steadily producing a glistening trail that any snail would be proud to own. And I knew without a shadow of a doubt that there was nowhere in the whole wide world that I would rather be. So we put up our chins and swept into that waiting room, loftily ignoring the wide berth we were given by the other occupants. Who says girls' afternoons have to happen at the Mall anyway?

I still believe in dreams - the bigger the better! It's just that sometimes we're already living them without realising it.