Dreams can come true...?

I had some pretty strange dreams last night. I was pregnant with twins (!). Even stranger, though, I spent $25.03 on doughnuts, which I would never, ever do. Chocolate or wine? You bet. But not doughnuts, even the oft-moaned-over Krispy Kreme varieties.

In any case, as I don't have the greatest dream recall, waking up with these images made me think about dreams of both the soporific and fantasy variety. What were my long-ago dreams? Have many, or any, of them come true?

I don't have many memories of childhood dreams. The earliest ones I really recall clearly took form in my early college days, when I fantasized about becoming a newscaster. I planned to call myself Liz Vincent (Vincent is my father's name; Stankiewicz was a bit...problematic) and completely envisioned myself behind a desk, all blond bangs and round, rosy cheeks.

But that's as far as the vision went. Never in those imaginations did I see myself toiling away year after year, waiting for my big break as I stood outside on a freezing night at 11 p.m. for a background shot for some story or other. I was always just conveniently plunked behind the newsdesk, smiling away at my own living-large self.

I guess that's the thing about those kinds of dreams. While they're worth having, and for some of us worth pursuing, they don't come for free. It's all well and good to believe you can do or be anything you want to--and you can--but not without a lot of effort and sacrifice. And time would soon reveal that I hated standing outside in the cold, so to speak. A warm kitchen and hot bath turned out to be more my speed.

And as I (and the majority of those reading this, I imagine) find myself at that point of life where this is "kinda it for now," as one of my friends says, I look back on that old dream and wonder if I really let myself down somewhere along the way. Would that girl ever have imagined the culmination of her journalistic fantasies would be covering board meetings at age 39?

On the surface, the answer to that is an obvious, huge no. But what the hell did SHE know? Because maybe it isn't just that the shape of your dreams changes...the definition does too. Because through 39-year-old eyes, two healthy kids who've always had a parent present, a solid marriage, a home, and the ability and desire to resume a calling--writing--that never quite left me all seem kind of...dreamy.