Thursday, September 27, 2007
So here is a damned bizarre dream I had some time ago that I am not quite able to shake. Perhaps I live in fear of my own brain so much that it's obvious what it means and I'm just not wanting to think about it.... you tell me.
The scene is my present office, in San Diego. I have worked too late. I have to go home. My husband has already called to yell at me twice for being so late.
So I go home. I decide to jog home. (At this point, I should have been somehow tipped off that this was a dream, but as happens in dreams, it seemed logical at the time.) As I am doing my jog, the scenery is more like St. Louis - for those of you who grew up there too, it's Ladue Road, all windy and hilly and green as spring.
I decide to cut through some residential neighborhoods to get home faster. Only, many of my present-day San Diego friends are outside in their St. Louis/San Diego yards with their kids or grilling or something. As I pass through they call out to me... Michelle! Shelley! How are you doing... and soon I am stopping here and there having chats with all these people. In the back of my mind, I realize that I am soooo terribly late getting home and that Don and my kids are just going to be madder and madder at me... still all these people are appearing and chatting.
Finally I get home. It's my parents' home, the home I grew up in. Only all MY things are in it and my now-family evidently live there. And none of this seems strange - we are living in my childhood home but it's in the present day in San Diego.
I catch the inevitable hell for being late, and then I start to relate my conversations with friends, as I know everyone will be interested in the details. Reesie is there, using the kitchen phone that had the very long cord. Reesie was my mom's maid from when I was a little kid. She used to watch the soaps while vacuuming.
Only in the dream, Reesie is like 6 feet tall and looks like an African American Jolly Green Giant in a maid's uniform. Oh shudder the thought but it all seemed so logical at the time...
Anyway, we start talking about needing someone to house-sit while we are on vacation and not being able to find anyone (which is happening in the real world). Reesie overhears us and quickly volunteers to do it! Because she and 50 of her friends need a place to stay, anyway, when the Gospel Festival they are performing in comes to town.
(Note: Ida Mae, my mom's OTHER housekeeper growing up sang in traveling gospel choirs, not Reesie.)
Don and I look at each other uncomfortably. 'Cause do we really want Reesie and 50 of her closest singing buddies in our house? We try and find a polite way to backpedal.
And that's when I wake up?!
OK geniuses... what is THAT?
5 comments:
Oh this is just too easy, Shel! You feel that your family is not happy with the amount of time you're spending with them (or that you've very close to reaching that invisible line, anyway. But you feel like this isn't an area in your control - you're being pulled by others. Same with the maid. You want to say no, but you don't know how without offending her. Same with the neighbors you stopped to talk to. You could have said no, but you didn't.
It's all about learning where the lines are, and how to step up and make sure you enforce what you think is the right thing to do.
Oh and by the way, the "wrong" stuff, like the neighborhood not being your current home, or it being your parents' house, or the maids being slightly mixed up is all incidental. None of that means anything. It's just your brain taking all it knows and throwing it together hodge-podge. The story line is what matters, not the details.
Oh I like that. I have to start saying no. NO. There.
Ooh, I know this one! I know this one!
St. Louis/our house represents your childhood and the concept that that's where people were taking care of you. The easy days when you could throw your clothes down the chute and they'd come back up clean and folded, and vacuuming was left to a maid, and life was pretty fine and dandy.
It's interesting that there is only San Diego and St. Louis in this dream, no Chicago. I guess you've made a good transition!
Anyway, obviously as Kelly said, your San Diego work and friends, as well as your family, demand your time, and in the dream, you go home (to Ladue Estates) and Reesie is there - probably your childhood symbol of a caretaker who didn't demand or expect anything from you. So here's this very neutral nurturer, and then of all things she wants you to do something to take care of her and her friends. That's like everything else in your current life - you take care of everyone (at work, friends, at home) and you want to be taken care of.
The message: you need a spa day.
That's an interesting one. If it leads me to a day spa, I'm for it.
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