I had a boyfriend once who was a hockey player (goalie) and played with Wayne Gretzkey here in Toronto years ago when Wayne came from Brantford, ONtario. I hadn't spoke of him much since I had got married and had children. I never spoke much of hockey after his passing either. We never watched hockey in my house, as to me every goalie was a reminder of the boyfriend I had lost. When I was pregnant with my second son Justin I had gotten out of my bed in the middle of the night because I felt a icy breeze blowing through my house as I slept on the second floor. I checked the front door it was closed. I went back to bed and had this dream I would never forget. I was in my nightgown in the dream, the same one as I went to bed in and I was with my dead boyfriend and he was driving me somewhere and it was fall. He was speaking and the whole time in my dream I was thinking I'm not making this up I don't know what he's going to say next. We got to this place and there hooded monks in brown robes (like a shrine) and a chruch on a hill, one of the monks said to me, "what are you doing here, your not supposed to be here." I was then called to the other side of the road by my boyfriend and he was up on a hill, I said, "how'd you get up there." He said, "think it and you will be up here". I did. He threw a blanket down on the ground and wanted me to stay with him. He said some things to me about what he could do and where he'd been and then he asked me to stay with him. I told him I couldn't that I was pregnant and that I had to go back. Something woke me and I was sweating and terrified and went into the bed that my husband had fallen asleep in with my oldest son while putting him to bed. I lay atop of his back and just lay there numb and scared. It was so weird that I remember it like it was yesterday. My son was born, three weeks early, and he was just beautiful. When he was 11 months old I found him infront of the full lenght mirror with an old skating helmet on, a hockey card in his hand, and a broken hockey stick my older son had found at the park. There was no reference to hockey in my house at all as no one spoke of it or watched it. This little baby was standing there in his diaper looking at the hockey card and looking at the mirror shaking his head "yes" up and down and the helmet three sizes too big going back and forth. He had put himself together. I just laughed. Then he started crawling up to the TV and changing it till he found hockey. I didn't think much of it. By the time he was 3 he was screaming at parks if there were boys playing hockey and pulling at me to take him there. Nope. So I began taking him to the rink and he wouldn't speak much before the age of 3 and he began to talk only at the rink. I started bringing him often. His speach improved. He was a natural, people started telling me and they kept saying that he had a gift and that he skated like the wind. When he was 7 I enrolled him (finally) in hockey. He became a new kid. He ate, slept and breathed hockey. He went from the lowest level house league to the "A" division REP level in one season. When he was 10 he heard some songs in the change room at hockey and one day asked me to record them for him....all of my dead boyfriends favorite songs from 1979-1980. My boyfriend had a mural of Jimmy Hendrix on the hood of the car that he tragically died in and my son phoned me at work and said, "mom there's this song..."excuse me while I kiss the sky (Hendrix-Purple Haze), get that for me" I almost fell off my chair, as that was the theme of the mural on the hook of the car. There were a bunch of these songs that just crushed me even listening to them, but I recorded them for him anyways. Well the last time I ever drempt of my boyfriend, since that time long ago, was once last year when my son, now 16 playing AA hockey in Mississauga, Ontario, CAnada (one of the most gifted skaters in his age group) was headed head first on his back toward the boards in a game and all the mom's including me gasped untill he turned himself suddenly. I went to sleep that night and drempt I was sitting with my son in a waiting room and my boyfriend came from around the corner and sat down beside him and looked at me and said, "did you think I would ever let something happen to "our son" on that ice. How creepy was that? I was freaked out and then I woke up. Now, that I can see me either conjuring up in my brain after the many similarities over the years, but there's always this...hmmmm....Well my son is the second born child of three boys, born in the month of June and a Gemini just like my boyfriend was, maybe birth order has alot to do with all of the similarities? I just discount the similarities but I have said to him just recently that, " I think you have a special gift given to you before you were even born." He agrees. How he got the way that he is beyond me but he is gifted and not "reincarnated" but purely driven and passionate. My two other sons are equally amazing at what they choose to do. This kid just in a reminder to me of a different time and space.
