Dreaming of childhood, I guess, but not quite.

[kyrielle]

I dreamed last night. At first, I was in a place I'd never known - somewhat like a carnival, or fair, but I think it was a permanent place, so an amusement park perhaps? At any rate, Luana (a friend from my school days, and the one whose mother kept the pinks my mother gave her) was there also. She'd been volunteering or working there for some time whereas I was on my first day. We spoke for a while - I forget of what - but then she had to go to what she was supposed to be doing and I had to go through orientation.

Skip. I was working in some place within the fair, with someone I knew in the dream but don't recall if I know in waking life. We were speaking of some guy who wanted to go out with me, but who didn't even bother to remember what I was allergic to in picking his gifts, which apparently somehow involved some kind of delicate grasses (??). We also discussed his (the guy I was speaking with) tendency to get up too early and up at work longer than he had to be since he would arrive early and not leave early.

Skip. I think I walked off at the end of the shift, but I'm not sure. Sweety - the first cat who was "mine" amidst the family cats, growing up - had had some kind of illness the previous year, ringworm or something like that which he never had in real life, but was now better but quite solitary so we often didn't know how he was. I was worried about him and went looking, and found him and started petting.

Skip. I was still petting Sweety and he rolled onto his back so I could pet his belly, and kneaded my hand with his claws. It didn't hurt but it did cover my whole hand even though his paw didn't. It felt like a big kitty hug, to be honest. I don't remember that he kneaded a lot in real life, or that he didn't. I looked up, smiling. "Look," I said, to draw attention to the kitty hug I was getting. I was sitting now in the living room at Ribbon Ridge, or rather, I was sitting on the orange carpet that always was there and not paying enough attention to see any other detail around me. The "feel" of the space matched that of the home I grew up in, though. and sitting on the floor a few feet from me, legs sprawled to the side in her usual fashion and doing something else - I know not what, only that she'd been paying attention to something else a moment before - was my mother. I think she smiled. But I don't know that she said anything. I think I may have said "Look" again but I'm not entirely sure.

And then my alarm went off. I wonder if I'd remember the dream at all if it had not, and yet, I wish it had not, because I would have liked to know if mother would speak. I lay in bed for a bit, clutching the details to me so I wouldn't loose them, before I got up. It was the left hand that Sweety was kneading, and I can still feel that hug. Mom's hair was short, like some of the pictures when I was small, a cap. I think she wore jeans and a sweatshirt, but that's more a sensation than a visual and may be inaccurate. I wonder if she was working on paperwork or something - where we were seated would have placed her, if I had the feel of the space right, directly in front of the writing desk.

(Hm. And I note that as I type this, I am seated on my living room floor, a few feet from that same writing desk, with Babe settled by my side. She's lying on the paper I first wrote bits of the dream down on, before I came downstairs. An interesting echo.)

And every time I woke, the wind was blowing by the corner of the house so I could hear it, and I thought I could hear the faint tick-tick of rain on the windows (which it did prove to be raining when I got up). I love a good bit of wind and rain as long as they do no harm, and Mom loved a good storm, though she did prefer the thunder-and-lightning sort.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

I should add that in the dream, Sweety was in his later years, but not yet in decline. Just with the dryer fur of older age, and with a number of notches in his ear (he was not, generally, a fighting cat by choice - he lived up to that name). I knew he was older but not yet too old, and he was still very alive. And in that moment, I think, very content.

That would place it probably around when I was in high school, I believe, if such things had a time.

I'm not sure why I said "paperwork" for the writing desk. Probably because of the high school time frame - notes from school board meetings were the only paperwork she really kept in the desk, otherwise it held cookbooks and mailing supplies and, of course, mail. Grandpa's letters went in the writing desk. And you could find the return address stamp and the postage stamps and...well, everything in there. But I don't remember what she was actually doing in the dream, and didn't when I wrote this. If I was even paying attention to it in dream-space, it didn't come to me when waking, and I'm not sure my dream-self wasn't being more self absorbed than to notice what I was interrupting in any case.

[roadskoller.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely dream with the cat hug and your mother. You were feeling content.

[phoenixscribe.livejournal.com]

Personally, I tend to go with the idea that when someone appears in your dream -- living or not in waking life -- they there to tell you something, or simply to visit. Were this my dream (in which case, it would be sans cat), I would have woken with a certainty that my mother was just wanting to spend a little time with me.

Those visitation dreams usually leave me with a sense of contentedness and an afterglow of the feeling of the dream itself for most of the day, if not longer. They're well loved.

[kyrielle]

I think that is how it felt to me also. And Sweety as well. He was my first cat, and one of my dearest childhood friends, and very, very tolerant. (I was five when I got him. He got used as a pillow, and subjected to all sorts of other indignity. Then again, one summer when he was seven or eight I think, we had two mother cats with six kittens each, sisters who would babysit each other's litter. It was not uncommon to come out and find one cat with twelve kittens, but I was charmed and amused the day I came out and found Sweety with twelve kittens crawling on him, and neither mother anywhere in sight.)

The dream was nice and so comfortable. And I'm sorry that waking ended it, but I'm so glad that I got to hold on to the memory. I think - I can't be sure - but I think this was simply to visit. There was nothing communicated that makes me think of a message. (The early part of the dream spoke to keeping commitments, but I'm not sure if it was as solid or not. Hum.)