Jefferson Beavers
Jefferson Beavers
Jefferson Beavers holds an MFA in creative nonfiction and a bachelor’s degree in journalism, both from Fresno State. For more than 25 years, he has held leadership positions in editing, publishing, media, and arts administration. A Chicano born and raised in California’s central San Joaquín Valley, he lives in Fresno with his wife and their longhaired chihuahua.
Grandma Dorothy came to me in a dream
and she
wore a purple dress like the one in the family photo that we gathered to take sometime in the ’90s. My job was to help her pull a surprise on someone, maybe someone at the high school or maybe someone at the farm bureau or maybe someone at JC Penney’s where she took me nearly every year in elementary to buy new shoes and clothes for the year ahead. I could hear her laugh, a little singsong, a bit witchy, the tee hee hee of the generous old Japanese lady who married my old Mexican abuelo after they both became widowed, and brought onigiri to La Familia García alongside the tamales.
A friend texted me:
“Please write somethin abt your grandma dream.” I texted back: Like write write? Or just like, text you? They said: “No that seems like it could be a poem or something.” So I reached toward the dream, trying to hear the laugh again, trying to hear the voice, trying to find the something. Although she’d been gone 15 years, I googled her and lo and behold she’s still listed, now age 90, as if she’d never died, with an address I didn’t know that now seems to be inside a field of trees. Nearly 50 relatives were included—tíos, tías, siblings, primos—but I was nowhere to be found. Maybe this was the surprise, a tracer flare for one missing heart.
Note: Grandma Dorothy came to me in a dream was performed during Fresno Rogue Fest 2025.