With a fresh coffee beside her, she began re-reading what she had written, trying to see it through his eyes, rather than her own, wondering if it would make sense to him. With very little editing, she decided it was complete, and went into her office to process it on her computer.
The computer system was a treat to her self once the fact that she was completely debt-free had registered. She had considered the possibility of compiling all of her dreams into a journal, and the idea began to take hold, with McKinnon's interest in the subject.
A pattern developed over the weeks that followed, one that she found immensely satisfying. She found her days revolving around her own dreams as well as his, the highlight of her days being the retrieval of the fat packages from the mailbox, and her enjoyment in getting to know him very well. He had begun slipping little personal notes into each package and she was replying with her own, so she was able to keep abreast of what was happening in his life, on all levels.
As the weeks passed, she explained to him the meaning of his dreams, but she also took the time to teach him how to interpret them on his own, suggesting that he get some file cards and begin his own personal dream dictionary. She explained that the same symbols would begin to appear repeatedly and when he had them documented, he would soon learn what they meant to him. She also told him that a diary of daily events and happenings would be of assistance as well, so that he could relate dreams to actual experiences. And how to look at other people in his dreams and, taking the first strong characteristic that came to mind about them, apply it to his own situation.
"The language of dreams is one of the oldest on earth, and simply needs to be learned like any foreign language," she wrote one day, in answer to his question about why she was personalizing everything. "Your subconscious mind looks for anything in picture form that will get a message across. You simply need to learn how to translate these pictures into words. Remember that your dreams, for the most part, are about you and for you. That's why they're personalized."
It was quite some time before he sent a dream which contained a story about his making love to another woman, and she smiled to herself as she interpreted it for him, knowing that he had probably had more than one, but hadn't quite had the courage to send them to her.