Righting The Bad

I had a bad dream the night before.

In it, I was on a working vacation with my mother, sister, niece and my son at a resort on the beautiful Issyk-Kul lake in my home country. We had a two-bedroom suite.

On the last day of the vacation, some more relatives - first cousins with their children - descended on us at the resort. There were a total of 12 or 15 of us now. You know how fuzzy the dreams are when it comes to facts and numbers.

It was a work trip for me as I was doing some seminars and workshops there. On this last day, I still had one more morning session to lead.

"If we want to take the bus with everyone else when they leave, make sure you are all packed and the suite is clean and ready for the walk-through by the resort staff," I said to my sister. "Otherwise we'll have to pay for our own transportation back to the city."

She promised she’d take care of everything.

When I came back to the suite after my session, ready to pick up my packed suitcase and board the bus, the suite was a complete mess. Not only did they not pack and clean, they also brought in large wooden crates full of the famous Issyk-Kul apples and apricots.

"Went out for the last swim," my sister's handwriting said in a note left on a table. "Join us when you are done!"

Overwhelmed, I went to the suite bedroom, making my way through trash and articles of clothing on the floor. My niece was on my bed, watching the TV and munching on the apples and apricots from the crates standing next to the bed. She was also fidgeting with her iPad.

“And why are you not with everyone else?” I asked.

“Didn’t feel like it,” she said in her typical teenage defiant style. She’s 27. Again, the fuzziness of dreams with numbers.

I got so upset and angry I just left the room and went out for a walk. As I walked, trying to process my feelings, I was getting more and more upset.

We’re gonna miss the bus for sure. Not that they’d let us on in the first place, the entire small army of us. With crates of fruit on top of that. But there was still a chance I could talk the logistics manager into letting us on. And now we’d have to arrange for alternative transportation. Guess who’s end up paying for it?

And the mess in the suite! It would take hours to clean up, we’ll have to pay for an extra day of staying, which is not cheap, and it will have to come out of my pocket. I’ll end up cleaning the mess. I always do. And all that time, money and effort will be my life’s expense I will never be able to write off. All I wanted was to give my family a nice vacation. While I was working. Fvck, why can’t I trust anyone with simple requests?

Tired and angry, I sat down on a bench and burst out with uncontrollable sobs of self-pity.

This is when I woke up. I know how my mind works. The dream is a result of the challenges I’m going through right now. Between fixing up my house trashed by the tenants, taking care of medical exams and travel vaccines, helping my friends settle in after their move from Canada, and getting ready for my own big move abroad for nine months, it’s a lot. My dream is a sign of how overwhelmed I am.

But I don’t want it to end badly. So I will myself back into the dream, get my butt off the bench, wipe off my tears and go back to the suite, fully determined to straighten everyone out.

I enter the suite and it’s all clean and ready for the walk-through inspection. My male cousins are loading the last of the fruit crates into the back of a small bus. I look at my niece, surprised, and she says, “When you walked in on me, I was ordering the bus online.”

“And who’s paying for it?” I ask, completely shocked.

“I am,” my sister said, coming out of the bedroom with my suitcase. “Come, we were just waiting for you.”

In real life, yesterday my sister found an air ticket for me from Tbilisi to Bishkek for $240. They were at least $500 from my end on Expedia. We’ll have a family reunion in about 10 days and I’m happy beyond words because I haven’t seen them since 2019. Global pandemic and the Russian-Ukrainian war, you know.

I guess this is one way to announce that I will be teaching in Tbilisi, Georgia for nine months starting in September.

And if you are so inclined to learn more about one of the most beautiful lakes in the world, here’s a great myth for you: