gracie

I bought a book on the meaning of dreams at a flea market this weekend. It reads more like a dictionary, where you look up the main focal point of your dream and see what it ‘really means’. The only dream I was able to remember and was interested enough to look up was one where I was hiding from some thieves in bushes outside my house. So I looked up ‘hiding’ and ‘bushes‘. It said that I was repressing the urge to express myself in a sexual manner. Huh? Ok forget that one. I looked up ‘parking lot’ and ‘lost’ because of a reoccurring dream I have of losing my car in a huge parking lot late at night. It said that I was losing my sexual awareness. (I sense a theme running through this) One more try….I looked up ‘baby’ and ‘crying’….yup, the baby represents the innocent in me crying out from sexual tension. I gave up and threw the book into the garbage. (which probably means I have discarded my sexual desires)

I guess provoked by the dream book, I had the first dream about my mom in a long long time. I awoke both saddened and happy from the experience. I was seated in a unrecognized diner when in walks my mother who, I might add, has been gone for over 15 years. At first, as expected I gasped at how much this woman looked like my mother, then as she approached and I saw that it truly was her. I kept saying…no way, this can’t be happening, but ‘Mom’ assured me it in fact was her. I immediately stopped questioning the how, and hugged her harder and longer than I probably had in real life. I never asked where she had been or how she came back…I just set upon the task of presenting her to the family. My kids were younger, closer to the age they were when she died. They were skeptical but easily convinced as was not the case with my brother. He needed answers but accepted them readily and without further explanation….which was good since my brother is gone since 2001 and trying to explain how our dead mother returned to my dead brother (who it seems also returned) was just a bit much for one dream. ‘Mom’ told us she had been looking for us. Even showed us a note that explained that she was looking for her family and that she was a diabetik….spelled just as incorrect as mom had spelled it. To whom she gave this note, we didn’t ask. Who showed her how to find us, we didn’t ask. How come she didn’t age…didn’t ask. Funny thing about dreams, they make all the sense in the world until we wake up. Like what happened next. We went shopping. ‘Mom’ and I went to a mall. What mall and where, no clue. In the dream I stared at her constantly trying to see some inconsistency, something that didn’t fit…..a mole on the wrong side of her face, a hole in an unpierced ear. Nothing. Even if this wasn’t my mom, well I was just as willing to accept her as a substitute….no more questions asked. But I did have one more question….perhaps because she hadn’t aged. I asked her how old she was….and she hesitated…and avoided…changed the subject. I could see her doing the math in her head and she came up with 66 which means she was 12 when she had me. (I guess I do look younger than my years) Her answer pierced me like a knife. This was an imposter, a good one, but a fake nonetheless. And as dreams have a tendency to do, everything changed. We were back in the diner…(funny how food always seems to take me to my comfort zone) the doppelganger turned into a much younger, looking nothing like mom, poor imitation. My brother was no longer there, just a few dollars he had left for his portion of the bill, and my kids were suddenly age appropriate. (and of course paying no portion of the bill) The phone rang and I woke up. Saddened by the fact that Mom was not back at all, nor was my brother. Happy though, that I got to feel my mother‘s hug, and smell her, and be reassured and comforted by her if only for one night.

I went to the garbage and fished out the dream book. I looked up dead people. I looked up dead mother and dead brother. I looked up imposter and diner and mall. And no matter what combination of dream keywords I used it came up the same theory. I want to end my sexual inadequacies by pretending to be someone I am not and bury my feelings by being overly dependent on a sibling. Gee, and I thought I just missed my Mom.