Summary

“Dreaming in Polish” follows an elderly married couple. They have been married for sixty years, and they always have the same dreams when sleeping. It eventually becomes evident that their dreams might be prophesies of future events in town. The narrator is a young woman named Celia who lives in town with her parents, and who is working at the local hardware store during the summer. Celia and her parents are Jewish, and at the mother’s insistence, they recently visited various Holocaust museums around the country. Celia’s father is sick and bedridden, and Celia helps take care of him. One day, the old man and old woman have a shared nightmare, and they awake speaking to each other in their native language of Polish. The vague but frightening nightmare causes a brief panic in...