I’m still getting used to the time change and have been getting up way too early. I took a nap today to make up for my lack of sleep. I feel like I may have drifted off and woke up several times until I finally fell asleep long enough to dream.
It was one of those dreams that seemed very real. I was in Elgin with my parents. I kept kissing the top of my dad’s head, happy he was with us. He seemed happy that I was happy. See, he’d died and then a month later he was alive again. Alive and well — no dementia. Alive and kind — no alcoholism.
Later he was driving me somewhere and I said to him, “Dad, you know that what happened to you has never happened to anyone ever, right?” He asked me what I meant and I told him that we thought he was lost to us, but he was back. And fixed.
I woke up then and it took me a while to remember that I was on vacation in Olympia and that my dad was, in fact, still dead. I also, in those few waking seconds remembered that I’d dreamed this same sort of dream many times, but never remembered them.
I don’t really know what it means, although I have a clue that I will keep to myself for now.
I am not a dog person. I am a cat person, but we’ve decided to have no more pets. This might change, but at the moment we are pet-free. Therefore, it is odd that I dreamed last night that I adopted a big, yellow, happy, friendly dog and immediately wondered why I’d not done this earlier. In the dream Dean was out of town, but I was sure that he would love this new addition to our family too.
Dream 2: In which Alan Rickman* kidnaps me but doesn’t murder me
In this dream my family was in a sort of indoor hiking facility and accidently chose the most difficult path that would eventually include some near rock-climbing abilities. I knew I could not handle this so when an employee offered to lead me to the lobby I said yes. He told me his name was Dag and then told me about all the people he’d killed at the facility, including a young boy whose photo he gave me. I escaped and was back on the difficult hike with my family, only this time I was stooping down, covering my eyes and hoping another employee would help me to the lobby.
This time the owner of the facility came by and offered to lead me to the lobby. As I stood up, he noticed the photograph of the young boy the other employee had given me. He asked, “Where did you get a photograph of my son?” I told him about the first employee and how he’d killed people there, but not that his son was one of them. He asked what the employee’s name was and I couldn’t remember. As we walked to the lobby through a labyrinth of narrow khaki colored halls, I remembered that the homicidal employee’s name was Dag. The owner said that no one employed by him was named Dag.
Here the owner of the facility led me into an auditorium where the manager was about to give an orientation speech. I saw that the doors to the lobby were just behind her, so I walked through them and waited for my family.
Dream 3: In which I tell Maryellen** about my dog (sequel to dream #1)
I stopped by Maryellen’s house to tell her about my dog. She asked what I was going to name it. I didn’t have a name.
Dream 4: In which I try tell my family the rest of the story (sequel to dream #2)
Since I couldn’t find my family in the lobby of the facility, I walked to the parking lot where they were waiting in the car. I asked them if they wanted to know the rest of the story, but they said they’d seen it since they finished the hike. I told them I doubted they knew the real ending.
Then I woke up.
*I didn’t realize that the murderous employee, Dag, was Alan Rickman until after I awoke.
**Maryellen is the mother of a student I taught many years ago. We’re friends on Facebook.
My waking dream this morning (rather, dream after I woke and fell asleep again) was my favorite kind of dream — a house dream. Only the other day I lamented, either to someone or to myself (is it worrying that I don’t remember if I was talking to myself or someone else?) that I’d not had a house dream in a while.
This was different from other house dreams because the house we’d bought was clear across the country in San Francisco. We’d visited it before — maybe to look at it to consider purchasing it or as tourists. In the dream, it was moving day. We’d just gotten off the plane and were on our way to the house wondering when Clare and Andrew would arrive to help us move in. Dean and I arrived at the house, which was somehow connected to a church that we also now owned, but rented out to a congregation, and let ourselves in.
Not our house, but it looked something like this except it was in the middle of a city block, not on its own.
The door was open and when we walked in the front door someone asked us if we belonged there. We showed them that we had the key and said it was our house. The person, a workman, said we should look around. We started in the kitchen and moved to the living room where we were glad to see a golden-yellow mid-century modern leather sofa until we noticed that the front of the middle cushion was in shreds. As we walked around the house more we noticed a lot of sofas and other furniture including an old crank telephone.
Clare arrived and was sad that we’d bought this house after she moved out because it was a Victorian mansion and she’d wanted to grow up in one. At this point, I was carrying her around like she was a child. I told her that now we’d be only a short airplane trip away instead of a 5-hour airplane trip away.
We walked into the master bedroom and noticed an ornate door that we’d missed on our first visit. The door led to a walk-in closet with views of a river running through downtown (yes, I know there is no river in San Francisco, but my dream self saw it). The closet also had a staircase that led downstairs.
As we continued our tour of the house we encountered more and more people who looked like they were either tourists or were shopping. I went back to the master bedroom and noticed a hospital bed behind a curtain and saw a man in the corner, crying and looking at some papers. I wondered if someone he loved had just died in the house.
I followed a woman dressed as a waitress into the walk-in closet and down the stairs. We went out a door and I tried to talk to her, to ask her if people in San Francisco were friendly because by this time I was not sure we’d made the right decision, moving across the country into a huge, possibly haunted, Victorian mansion. She would not answer me and disappeared into a doorway. I turned around and realized that I was in 1800’s San Francisco.
That’s when I woke up and my first thought was “how the heck could we afford a Victorian mansion in San Francisco?” My second was that I was relieved that we were still in Bethesda. My third was how weird it was that I was carrying Clare.
My interpretation:
The house in San Francisco: I bought Ruth Franklin’s biography of Shirley Jackson a few weeks ago and read a bit of it which mentioned the house that Jackson likely based “Hill House” on. I must have had that at the back of my mind, although I have not yet read “The Haunting of Hill House“, I have seen both movie adaptations of it.
The people in the house: After thinking about the dream for a short while I thought that aspects of it were like the House on the Rock in Wisconsin, so perhaps the people were visiting a similarly strange house in San Francisco.
Carrying Clare: A few days ago I had the pleasure of holding a family friend’s 2-month old grandson. I remember thinking back to when I held my own children like that.
Time Travel: I don’t know — I like time travel. I like the staircase being the portal.
Shredded couch cushion: We have a leather sofa I hate in our basement and Dean just bought something to fix it. I was hoping we were going to replace it instead.
Or maybe I have been watching Twin Peaks too close to bedtime!
Clutch Cargo Lips 