Book Club

I recently finished reading a book brought to Chicago by Juliet. I love the tradition of sharing books, passing on a good read when you are done with it. I am also delighted when I am the unexpected beneficiary of this practice.

The Zookeeper's Wife tells the story of the Warsaw Zoo during WWII. The book provided a balance of historical fact as well as family life as the Nazis took over Warsaw. The zookeeper's family had a menagerie of odd pets, badgers, meercats, regular cats and hamsters, and an arctic hare, so the animal characters of the book are about as prominent as the humans. (There's more from a review here.)

The night I finished reading this book I had a dream about Ginger, the dog of the neighbor we grew up next to, Mrs. Urbanski. She was Polish herself and spoke with a heavy accent. When I was little she always entertained our visiting on her front porch. I remember showing her how I had first learned how to blow bubbles with my bubble gum. Ginger was a little dirty mop of a dog that would jump up on our bare knees, happy to see us. Since we had no pets, Ginger was like a little foster dog.

I wonder if, while dreaming, my brain was thinking of the book and just looking through its files for "Polish animals" and all it found was our Polish neighbor's dog. I had not thought of that dog for years and years. It's funny the little trails our dreams take us down while we sleep.