A brief recounting of the providential dream I had, at 4 years of age in 1960

As a teenager, my wife Fujiko dreamed of being on an ocean beach. Behind her was a low bluff, with many small grottos, filled with Buddhas and sacred items.

She was looking out to sea, and saw a man swimming toward her. He came to shore, and walked up onto the sand. A handsome young Asian man, who she did not recognize.

Until several years later, when she met the church, in Fukuoka.

In the dream, I was riding westward in a car, I think with my father driving, and we pulled off the winding two-lane road to Half Moon Bay. Then we parked on the far side of a plain-and-tiny little white church. (‘We’ implying my sisters must’ve been along, though they played no direct role. That road is the same today, with tourist-attraction farms, however there is no actual church.)

My mother was waiting inside. She opened a narrow side door and leaned out, telling me, “Paul, your good clothes and tuna fish are ready.”

(This is the clearest direct memory I have, of my mother as a young woman. Also a deep expression of love, in my toddler’s life. My paternal grandma always took me clothes shopping at Capwell’s department store, and made delicious tuna sandwiches.)

Then I glanced behind me (having somehow exited the car) and saw, behind a low wooden-board fence, a fire. Not the flames, but the wavering column of hot air which indicated the presence of a hot fire.

(See, I was a junior scientist even then.)

Curious, I walked, alone, toward the hidden fire. It was a rough, unpainted fence, with maybe four long narrow slats nailed onto old wooden posts. Directly in front of me was a gate, made the same way, but closed.

I climbed up onto the gate, in order to get over the fence. At that instant, as I swung one leg over, the whole gate detached and flew upward. Suddenly, steadily, with no feeling of wind or acceleration, I was zooming upward.

(I understood how odd that would be, for those factors to be missing, compared to real life.)

That’s the end of the dream.

I also have memories of lying still and wondering what it meant, from later in my childhood.