Reoccurring Dreams and Memory Queues

My dreams all have common themes, at least the ones that wake me up do. The most common one is of me searching for a bathroom and finding them in different states of grossness or the doors will be locked or don't have door knobs. In my dreams I’ll be in a near state of panic until I find a place to pee. Then I’ll wake up and scramble off to the bathroom. Just in time. It’s not hard to figure out why my unconscious self is inventing variations of this dream but last night there was a new twist that has me trying to play detective inside my head to figure out why I dreamed I had a bag of apples with me on my search for bathroom, one with a clean surface where I could put my bag of apples while I did my business. I don’t like apples, I’ll buy a small bag in the fall for emergency eating but they are usually still in the crisper in the spring when I’ll make them into apple sauce. Does the bag of apples symbolize something besides a backup plan for eating if I get snowed in? Maybe they're some burden or barnacle my daytime life has taken on?

Another common dream that’s been waking me up almost every night since I started downsizing is of my husband and I’m trying to find him but I can't. Sometimes I dream he left me for another woman and I blame my sister-in-law for that twist in the “lost dream” because a couple of weeks after he passed she told me Don was in heaven surrounded by women. “Thanks, I don't need that image in my head!" I told her and she said, “Don’t you want him to be happy?” and I replied/shouted, “Not that happy!” No matter why I can’t find him in my dreams I’ll wake up with a sense of loneliness that once in a while comes with tears. Like last night. After he died I had a lot of these “lost dreams” then they stretched farther and farther apart. Now they are back in full force. I’m guessing it’s because my daytime activities of downsizing are churning up so many memories.

The most recent downsizing sale is for a custom-made ring Don and I had made after his stroke that incorporated a 35 year service award pin he got from work. It cost a small fortunate for the workmanship but the gold value is pennies on the dollar. That didn’t matter as much as finding someone who collects Chevy memorabilia so it wouldn't get sold for scrap gold. Getting the ring made was my idea, a trade-off for Don agreeing to let me to sell off two vintage gas pumps. He loved those pumps but he loved that ring more. He’d show it to everyone he’d meet and would say one of the few words in his post-stroke vocabulary. “Two!” he’d say proudly. Of course that would confuse the person looking at the ring and I’d have to step in and explain that we sold two antique gas pumps to pay for the ring. I hated him showing that ring to every Tom, Dick and Harry that came along. I was always afraid one of those Toms, Dicks or Harrys would rob us of that ring. How easy that would have been to rob, an old man in a wheelchair and old women who can’t run past her own shadow. One of the guys who looked at the ring knew Don from work and he had such good stories to tell and once again I was reminded of how much of my own history ties in with his.

Minimalists fascinate me. Living with less is an easy goal when you’re just starting out and don’t have much to begin with but trying to downsize to be a minimalist after a lifetime of accumulating is a different can of worms. Stuff is no longer stuff, stuff come attached with memories. Stuff comes with guilt for having so much or spending so much or not wanting to get rid of it because you’ve become sentimentally attached when you shouldn’t. Stuff is just stuff. Well, at least that’s what I keep telling myself. Some days that's easier to say than others. 

Books are one of hardest things for me to let go of. I loved having an entire room lined with bookshelves. Yesterday I packed up another load of roughly 100 books to drop off at the library for one of their sales. Some of the vintage books would sell on e-Bay for $50-$70 but out of all those books I packed in my car I couldn’t let go of two small 1880’s books, one on raising chickens and the other on trapping furbearers. I set them aside to list on e-Bay and I’ll be lucky to get $20 each for them. Why those two books out of all the others got the royal treatment, I can’t say. They probably have some lost memory attached about the day I found them at a flea market or garage sale or estate sale. When a librarian was helping unload my treasures she said they have a person who goes through all the donations looking for collectable books that they’ll sell on e-Bay which took the sting out of donating them. Knowing they won’t get destroyed for a cute, little DIY project and they’ll make the library more than a dollar a piece made my day. No one needs a shelf made out of a rare book cut in half or some of the other crazy things the crafters do! Don't show me those projects! They hurt my eyes.

On the way home a song came on the radio that confirms I’m not the only one who attaches memories to objects. Here’s the lyrics: “She kept the hotel key. Slipped it in her purse. I guess it makes her think of me, and that night we left our hearts on our sleeves and the clothes all over the floor.” It goes on to describe her as wearing his t-shirt and half-drunk smile. I love that expression---half-drunk smile. I remember them well from my far away younger days. I rarely drink anymore because I lost my designated driver when Don had his stroke. Hey, I could take it up again after I move and I'll be within walking distance from the campus restaurant! ©

Books, Jell-O and Sentimentality

Our senior hall has a once-a-year book presentation given by a storyteller/librarian and anyone who’s been to one of her speeches never wants to miss the next one. She picks a batch of books from a certain genre and her excitement over their plots and authors is infectious. I could listen to her all day. The funny thing is I get her book list hand-outs but rarely read any of her picks which just goes to show you don’t have to be a reader to enjoy a great book talk. This week’s presentation was titled ‘Chillers and Thrillers’ and it included the following books: In the Kingdom of Ice, The Death of Mrs. Westaway, Those Who Wished me Dead, Under a Flaming Sky, The Midnight Plan of the Repo Man, On Desperate Ground, The Woman in the Window, Enemy of the Good, and The Plea. 

Right now I’m reading two books. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot and Homegoing by Yaa Guasi. The first book is a true story of a poor tobacco farmer whose cells were taken without her knowledge and they became the basis for developing a wide variety of medical advancements. That one is for our March book club discussion. The other book, Homegoing, is one my great-niece highly recommended to me, telling her mom, “I thought of Aunt Jean the entire time I was reading this!” How could I not download that one on my Kindle? I haven’t gotten far enough into it to understand why my great-niece sees me in the pages but I’ve read enough reader reviews on Amazon to know the book gets heavily involved in genealogy research. I’m at a point in the book where one African tribe is helping the English capture another tribe’s members to sell in the slave trade. I’ve never uncovered anything remotely that dramatic or tragic in my family tree but the mystery and thrill of the hunt is what keeps most genealogy hobbyists going.

I took two clothe grocery bags full of books to the library’s semi-annual book sale this week. They were all cookbooks. I don’t cook. I never did. Still, it was hard paring down my collection so that all the cookbooks I have left fit on two running feet of shelving. As I was unloading the books on the library donation cart I had second thoughts about a book on making desserts with Jell-O. I put it on the cart and I took it back off several times, then I held it midway in between trying to understand why I cared about that book. It was from an era when ladies in TV commercials served Jell-O with the same flare as the chefs on the Food Network do today, but I hadn’t opened that book in decades. Did it remind me of my mom? The day before, my niece and I had been looking through my family photos and that made me overly sentimental, I thought. Still, I wanted to keep that Jell-O book so badly but I didn’t and I regretted it all the way home. Why on earth Marie Kondo didn’t pop into my head and tell me to keep the darn, joyful little thing is a mystery I’ll never understand.

What makes some of us more sentimental than others? I’m guessing somewhere out in the world is a person who was born at the exact moment I was and that person has a cold disregard for anything remotely sentimental because I got a double dose---part of which belongs to that moment-of-birth twin. There was a story on our local news last night about an old man who walked into an antique store and found his WWII era Army uniform hanging there with all his metals and name still attached. He burst out crying. It had gotten lost during a move and the owner of the antique store gave it to him, wouldn’t accept a penny. Why is that kind of sentimentality celebrated and worthy of a human interest story but an old woman who wants to stay attached to a Jell-O cookbook is viewed as silly or too sentimental for her own good? Ya, I know, we’re allowed to be sentimental over uniforms and wedding dresses but there’s a line to be drawn somewhere down on the chain of other innate objects. 

Wikipedia says, “Sentimentality originally indicated the reliance on feelings as a guide to truth, but in current usage the term commonly connotes a reliance on shallow, uncomplicated emotions at the expense of reason.” That’s a charitable definition compared to one I found at Vocabulary.com: “Sentimentality is a quality of being overly, dramatically emotional — sad or loving or nostalgic. Your sentimentality on her eightieth birthday might make your down-to-earth grandmother roll her eyes.” Roll your eyes all you want but without sentimental people in the world there would be no museums full of obsolete and curious oddities to visit and amaze you. Now, I’m going to go check out e-Bay sales to see how much I could have gotten for that vintage Jell-O cookbook. ©

 Johnny Carson makes an ice cream pie with Jell-O

Changing Circumstances and Dreams

While looking for a quotation for another blog post, I ran across the following words that I saved for later dissection and consumption:

"I’ve been thinking about the human spirit lately, that delicate, resilient, ageless part of us that holds fast to our dreams, hopes, needs, and wants. And I’ve been wondering, can we keep the changing circumstances of our life, both good and bad, from changing that essential part of us?”

It’s a wonderful string of words, don’t you think? But do they have the ring of universal truth? I’ll get to that later. They were written by Lilli Jolgren Day, a debut author of the book The Wonder of Ordinary Magic. After reading about the book on Amazon and at the author’s blog I don’t think the quote is from her novel but rather it’s a random thought dispersed in with her lovely photographs. But I was pleasantly surprised to see she was offering free downloads for Kindle readers. She says the book explores “grief, courage, vulnerability, family and connection” so it might be awhile until I read it. I’m not ready for that yet, to grieve again even for a fictional character. The story unfolds in a hospital room as family members come and go at the bedside of a young writer who is in a coma.  He is aware of what is going on around him and he struggles to finish writing---in his head---the book he’d been working on before his accident. Any teachers who might be reading this will laugh at my attempt to condense/review a book I’ve never read…so if I gave you a reason to smile today, your welcome.

Back to the quotation. Ms Day asks if we can keep the changing circumstances of our lives from changing our dreams, our hopes, needs and wants. To me, the answer is a no-brainer. Editing those things is inevitable with changes in our circumstances. It’s the changing circumstances of our lives that makes us grow and helps form the resilience she talks about. Candice Lightner founder of MADD would not have started the organization if not for the death of her daughter at the hands of a drunk driver. If not for the Civil War coming along Clara Barton probably would have died an anonymous teacher instead of becoming the driving force behind establishing the Red Cross. These are extreme examples but they illustrate my point that the changing circumstances of our lives can’t help but alter our dreams, hopes, needs and wants.

Now at the dawn of my second year of widowhood I’ve been cataloging my dreams, hopes, needs and wants to see what I’ve outgrown or no longer desire in my new, single-hood world and what I might like to add to the list. Widows all eventually get around to doing this; I have no doubt about that. And I’ve been thinking about moving my computer cabinet and kitchen table out of the breakfast nook and claim the area for an artist nook so I can take up painting again. Here’s the hang-up: it would involve making room in the library for my computer cabinet. I’ve started taking some of Don’s books to my antique booth to sell but the enormity of the job of downsizing his collection is overwhelming. It will take me forever if I don’t go into full battle mode with eBay listings. Believe it or not, going through his books is almost worse than purging his clothing from the closet was. He didn’t care about clothes, but he loved his books. Donating the books isn’t an option I like because many of them are too valuable and I’m too practical for that. Why does it have to be so hard to get from A to point B? After fourteen months of widowhood you’d think I’d get used to these bumps in the road, wouldn’t you. Sometimes I feel like a turtle crawling along the sand trying to keep the Sea of Enormous Possibilities in view, but wanting nothing more than to draw my head inside my shell until one of these widowhood induced issues goes away.

Art classes will be starting up soon at the sculpture park and when I go out to see the butterfly exhibit in April---the week of Don’s birthday and our anniversary---I’m going to sign up to become a member and pick up a class schedule. It’s a start. Maybe it will give this turtle the scent of the sea. We shall see if the changing circumstances of my life has closed or opened a door to past dreams.... ©