but a dream

If we could all control the past, there would be nothing left for the present. We're all basically nihilists in the face of conflict.
It has been said that life is but a dream, for the first time in my life I started to understand exactly what that means on my way home from the bar with some friends tonight.
I pulled up into the garage in my car. The garage was empty because my parents went out of town for the weekend. It was 1:30 in the morning, so it was pretty much dark outside of the silent ambiance of my headlights as I rose up the hill of the driveway and eased my less-than-sober ass into the garage. It was then that I saw this mark on the door directly in front of the parking space where my father's car is usually parked, but since they were gone I parked there myself. I saw this vertical rectangular puncture wound in the door to the storage room that sits right in front of the parking spot, and I instantly remembered the day I put that mark in that door with my first car, the car I inherited from my grandmother, a 1987 Buick Century. That car is long gone. My grandmother has long since taken her last breath. But the imprint of both of them in my memory is still quite vibrant, and it all came rushing back to me at 1:30 on a Sunday morning after a night of Jameson and ginger ales, and a few beers.
I remembered how it happened. I was in high school, 16 years old, shortly after I got my license when I pulled into the garage a little faster than I needed to as I arrived home from school one night. I guess driving faster than I needed to made me feel cool.
As I sat there, contemplating the events of a random night of drinks and conversation some nine years later, I looked to my right at the empty spot next to me where my mother's car is usually parked. There was nothing there on this night because they were out of town, but I remembered. Not my mother's car as it is now, but her old car, the minivan.
I remembered pulling into the garage in high school and looking to my right and seeing that old 1993 Dodge Caravan parked right there. It had been years since my mother got rid of that thing, but it stuck with me, probably because I spent so much time in it. And as I sat in my '91 Honda Accord this late-spring night in 2007, I could still see that minivan parked in my mother's spot. I could see the missing hub-cap that she didn't give a damn about because they're just for decoration and she couldn't see them anyway while she was driving. I saw that tarnished burgundy interior, worn from so many years of children and carpooling and rides home being berated about homework that would surely never be done, smelling of soccer cleats and football pads and fast-food crumbs decomposing in the cracks between the back-seat cushions. I saw that life that seemed so distant but ineffaceable, tormenting the present with visions of its own subdued hilarity as if to say, 'those good 'ol days will never be back', even though I never thought of them as that exactly at the time.
As I sat there in the Honda, smelling the beer and liquor still wafting from my own mouth, I wondered if I could have ever imagined that things would unfold this way as my 16-year-old self sat in that Buick wondering if my parents would ever notice that rectangular gash I had freshly tattooed on their house, and how they would punish me if they ever connected it to my actions. It's funny how the present repeats itself. I sat wondering then, just as I did tonight. Only the substance changed. Things were so much simpler then. So long ago, but not long enough for me to have forgotten. So real, but hopelessly lost and gone forever, just like everything else about the past.
Life is but a dream. Once it's over, you can't have it back, even though you have no idea that you would ever want it back at the time. I guess we're just supposed to try. Try to treat it like dream from which we've suddenly just awaken, and all we want to do is go back to sleep so we can start it all over again, and maybe this time have some input on the ending.