Building Walls

I just woke up from a dream but I only remember the last image before it sent me awake--there was a dream catcher dangling from an old grayed wooden fence post in the dawn light. Perhaps it means the things I fear can form a block of sorts, can try to keep me from moving freely. We build up so many walls, constructed out of our uncertainties. But this year for me has been about overcoming these uncertainties so I'd like to think that if I had finished my dream I would have climbed that fence and walked across it like a tight rope, shrinking my fear. What does it mean that one of my kids' favorite things to do is build forts? Fisher has spent hours setting them up, using blankets and chairs and sofa cushions. Then he and Phoenix will lie down in them and just be--eating snacks or pretending there are zombies outside those walls. I remember building forts myself as a child, and who didn't? I wonder why that is such a timeless and universal past time of childhood. To be so young is like walking in a foreign country, scarcely knowing the language and just figuring things out as you go. Perhaps constructing forts is their own form of safety and reasoning--their way of shrinking the world down to smaller bits that are easier to digest, to make sense of. Then they have a more intimate taste of the world that to them is so wide and unknown. I'm thinking the need to box in our surroundings, to build shelters, is a fundamental part of our nature. We want safety, we want to own a piece of something. But every once in a while, isn't it a lovely thing to sleep under the cage of stars?