When my mother died, for the longest time thereafter, I had a dream. Same dream almost every night. In my dream, I was home, in the house where I grew up, the same house which my mother had designed and had built. My dreams were memorable, even startling for me, for I hardly ever dream, or if I do, I can never remember my dreams.

But in these dreams of home, everything was so vivid, so particular, so specific as to be unnerving. Sometimes I would be in the basement, dragging out the old lawn mower to cut the grass, kicking aside the battered can which held the gas for the mower. And I would marvel that it was the same can, there, resurrected before me, tangible. I would pick up the can, turn it over, examine it carefully and there, on the can were the familiar dents and scratches.

In oth…