The Dream That Sang to Me

I’m a hundred years old. That’s not a boast—it’s a reckoning. You live that long, you see things. You lose things. You learn things you wish you’d known sooner. And sometimes, if you’re lucky, you get visited by something so beautiful it makes you weep without knowing why.

It happened last night. I had a dream.

In the dream, I was driving down a country road, the kind I used to know like the back of my hand. Gravel crunching under the tires, fields stretching out like old quilts. The sun was low, casting that golden light that makes everything look softer than it really is.

Up ahead, there was a car pulled over on the shoulder. A Black family stood beside it—not in distress, not waving for help. They were playing music.

Not just any music. I mean playing it. Singing it. Living it. The kind of music that wraps around your ribs and makes you forget you ever had a heartache. I couldn’t tell you the words. I couldn’t hum the tune. But I remember how it felt.

It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever heard.

I didn’t stop. I didn’t speak. I just listened. And when I woke up, I felt like something had been poured into me. Something warm. Something right.

Now, I’ll tell you something I’m not proud of. When I was young, I was a racist. That was the way I was raised. I didn’t question it. I didn’t know better. But life has a way of peeling back the layers if you let it. I’ve spent years trying to unlearn what was taught to me in whispers and rules and sideways glances.

And this dream—it was like grace. Like the universe saying, You see now? You hear now?

I’ve been thinking about it all day. Not the melody, not the lyrics—I couldn’t recall a single one. Just the feeling. The beauty. The way it lifted me.

Maybe it was a gift. Maybe it was a glimpse of something I missed for too long. Maybe it was my soul finally catching up to the truth.

I don’t know what dreams mean. But I know this one meant something.

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Daughter’s Reflection

Hunny

When my Daddy told me about the dream, his voice was lit from within. I could hear it through the phone—like something holy had brushed against him in the night.

He’s a hundred years old. He’s lived through wars, through reckonings, through the long shadow of Jim Crow. And he’s lived long enough to tell the truth about himself. That’s no small thing.

I’ve spent my life fighting for justice, for belonging, for the kind of music he heard in that dream. And to hear him speak of it with reverence—not guilt, not defensiveness, but awe—was like watching a door open that had been sealed for generations.

Maybe the dream was a visitation. Maybe it was the ancestors singing to him. Maybe it was the sound of healing.

I don’t need him to remember the lyrics. I just need him to remember the beauty. And he did.

That’s legacy. That’s grace. That’s the kind of music I want to pass on.