Rooftop Dreaming

Camas para sueños (Beds for dreams) (1985) by Carmen Lomas Garza (1948-)
Smithsonian American Art Museum
(http://americanart.si.edu/education/corazon/artistas_01.cfm)

I first saw Camas para sueños nearly five years ago when I was visiting Austin, Texas to attend a conference (and to see my dear friend Crary). On my lunch break I wandered down Congress Street and came across the Mexic-Arte Museum (http://mexic-artemuseum.org/), which was hosting an exhibit on Photography of the Mexican Revolution. After passing through the exhibit, I found in the gift shop a print of Camas para sueños, which I bought for the girls. Ok, it was also for me. The print now hangs, framed, where all can see it in our home. 

I especially love Camas para sueños because it reminds me of my sister and the dreaming we used to do as kids. Out my second-floor bedroom window in the 206 East Park Avenue home was a roof onto which I used to climb. Though I could never have put into words then the reason for my rooftop escapades all those evenings, I know now that they were essential. The roof was above the kitchen, where my mom would be, her steady presence allowing me to dream. 

My house now, too, has a roof to climb out on -- the one above the screened porch out back -- though the window air conditioning units make it difficult to do in the summer. That's ok, though. Summer has its own escapes. It is the fall, with all its demands of work and school, that makes time on the roof most inviting, and needed. I look forward to those evenings when we climb out, lie on our backs, and gaze at the towering pine tree above, and, beyond that, the stars.