Dreams and Rain Storms

At the risk of turning this blog into a dream diary, I had another weird one last night. I was lost in a large city with a storm approaching and it was the middle of the night. After searching narrow streets bordering on the ghetto, I finally found my apartment (one I’d never lived in in my non-dream life). It was like a tunnel---long, windowless, dark and bleak with brown cement walls and I was telling a niece-in-law who was with me that it “grows on you.” That's when I remembered that I had left my car on the other end of town and I had to go back through the city again to get my car. I woke up then to a thunderstorm beating rain on the windowpanes. It was six-thirty and the alarm would ring at seven. I had an early morning appointment with the irrigation people to turn on my system, so I got up.

Caves in dreams can mean you’re exploring your subconscious mind or it can symbolize the womb and thus be a place of concealment or protection. In my case I’m going with door number one and I believe the cave-like apartment was a self-discovery thing and I was discovering potted plants at every turn of my apartment, too many of them! They were everywhere and I was wondering how they survive without natural daylight. Okay, that’s not too hard to figure out that plants are all about fertility and potential---growth---and in my wake life I’ve been worried that I have too many irons in too many fires as I try to rebuild my post-widowhood life. I need to purge some “irons” and nail down what I want to do with the time I have left on earth. Where do I fit in? What’s it going to take to make me truly happy? When is some of the stuff I’m doing going to start paying off? These questions are tucked in the back of my mind and won’t go away---apparently not even when I sleep.

Dreaming about forgetting where you parked your car can signal a dissatisfaction or unhappiness with your waking life according to the dream dictionary Duh, I didn’t need a dream to tell me that but still I was surprised. I already knew that dreaming about cars in general can symbolize ambition and your ability (or inability) to navigate through the various stages of your life but there are tons of dream interpretations based on what is happening to your car. I’m just glad my dream car wasn’t under water, crushed or overheated. Parked on the other end of town? It would have been doable to get it back if I could have slept a little longer. At least that’s what I want to believe now that I’m awake and sitting here waiting for the no-show irrigation guys.

I blame/credit fellow blogger, Bella, from Cul-de-Sac-Chronicles for reviving my interest in dream interpretations. (She has the most interesting dreams! I’m especially jealous of her latest encounter with Joe Biden.) Dream interpretation was a hot and heavy hobby of mine for many years and I worked hard at honing the art of remembering my dreams. I stopped doing that when my dad was in the early stages of Alzheimer’s and he literally could not separate his dreams from reality. After spending one too many hours trying to convince him that people were not having a party in his living room, that he’d left the TV on again and incorporated the sound into a dream, I gave up keeping a dream diary. It scared me to think someday I might not be able to sort out what is real and what is not. When my husband died my ability to remember dreams came back full force---with a lot of encouragement from his guest appearances during my nights. Now, it’s rare that I wake up without a dream lingering on the fringes of my mornings. If that's good for my mental health or not, it is what it is.

I have a nice week of activities ahead. I have a luncheon to go to at the senior hall, my Movie and Lunch Club later in the week, a vet appointment with my favorite guy, Levi the Schnauzer, plus two showers---one on each side of my family. But now, I have to brave the stormy weather and go to the grocery store. ©