I Dream of Houses

I have several recurring dreams.  One is a standard stress dream where it is the last day of the semester in college and the final is tomorrow.  I suddenly realize I never went to any of the classes.  I don't know any of the material and will surely fail.  Another is the "naked in a public place" type of dream where I feel embarrassed and exposed.

My dreams are vivid and wacky and I often wake up confused as to whether they actually happened or not.  I have some general themes that I can easily connect to my real life issues.  One of my favorite bizarre dreams was when I was pregnant with Scott and so worried about breast feeding.  I dreamed that I gave birth to my dog.  Yes, my first baby was born, without any pain, arriving all fawn-like with long legs and fur.  My immediate reaction in the dream: Oh, good, I won't have to breast feed her, I can just give her puppy kibble!

I dream a lot about buildings.  Complex layouts and details of houses, apartments, offices, factories.  The setting for the dream becomes more important than the events unfolding within it.  I think I was an architect in another life.  These are made up structures, places that I've never actually seen in real life.

Except for two houses.  One, the house my cousin lived in, where her parents still live.  The other, my childhood home that I inhabited for six years from the time I was 8 and first moved to this small town, until I was 14 and had to move across town and; subsequently, attend the rival high school from where my siblings went.

When I dream about my aunt's house, it is mostly the same house only altered slightly.  I know why I have dreams that take place in this house.  It is a happy, safe place for me.  My aunt always made me feel special when I would come to visit my only-child cousin for weeks at a time.  As the youngest in my household, I often felt overlooked and unimportant.  But at my aunt's house, she'd stock up on apple juice and Cookie Crisp cereal before I arrived.  She always made me feel special.  It doesn't take a degree in Psychology to conclude that the dreams that take place in this house leave me feeling calm, content, wanted.  In these dreams, the house is very much the setting, not the main point, and all kinds of characters can be part of the scene, whether they would have any logical reason to be in that house or not.

Now, when I dream about the house on Foxcroft Drive, it is a true recurring dream.  I say that because it is very similar each time.  I am, for some reason, moving back into this house.  It could be just me with my parents, or me with my current nuclear family, or even on my own.  It usually goes something like this:  I am house-hunting with a real estate agent and end up at this very house.  I tell the agent that I grew up here and that I just knew I would someday move back into the house.  I decide I have to live there.  I tell the agent how I've been dreaming about this for years and here it is coming true.  The dream continues with me and my family moving our things in, deciding who will get which rooms, what changes we need to make.

While this is going on, I have flashbacks to major and minor events that happened there.  The time my father decided he would burn some brush in a ditch in the backyard and ended up with third degree burns on his face and arms.  My mother smoking a single cigarette and drinking a Tab as she wrote out her grocery list at the end of the day when the kids were supposed to be asleep.  My sister and I making up gymnastic routines in the basement pretending we were Nadia Comaneci.  The party my brother had when my parents went out of town and the dog got drunk.  Christmases, birthdays, meals, arguments, laughter.  So many memories.

At the same time, I have this sense of being exactly where I should be.  Like a destiny fulfilled.  My mother is convinced that there was a bad spirit in that home that had it out for my father.  He did experience a lot of bad luck during those 6 years - car accidents, health problems, money troubles.  My parents fought often during that time period.  It was a big house, one they probably could barely afford, and I know they stressed about keeping up with the doctors and lawyers that lived in the neighborhood.  And my brother and sister were teenagers who were, let's just say, not always the easiest to parent. 

We settled at this house after having moved three times in three years.  My mom vowed that we would never move again.  She decorated to the hilt, joined woman's groups and played golf at the country club.  Like most families we had lots of fun times and plenty of bad ones.  It was a roller coaster.  I always felt loved and cared for, but I was the last, and least noticed. 

When we moved it was traumatic for me.  I threatened to run away.  They were uprooting me, to a condominium on the other side of town just as I was going into high school.  I had to attend a different high school then the one my brother and sister went to.  For the first time, no one was forging the path in front of me.  I was angry, but, in the end, this turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

I do not have this dream all the time.  Sometimes I go months without it and then there are weeks where it visits me nightly.

The dream always ends the same.

I am in the house and I am thinking, this finally came true, just like I knew it would.  Just like I knew it would.  I don't feel happy or sad, just slightly satisfied.  That I am in familiar surroundings and more over, that I am proven right.  That I saw this coming.  This return.  That I am, of all my siblings, the one who just knew, who this was supposed to happen to.

I awake expecting to be in the house, in my parent's room.

Every time I am so sure it is true.

Comments

[Kiran]

Hey Martha- I think that it depends on what you are drinaemg about. Sometimes I dream about things that I thought about or read before I went to sleep. Then, other dreams seem so real that I am confused when I wake up as to whether they actually occurred in my awake state. You know as kids we had the wildest imaginations, then somehow when we grew up we lost a lot of that. I believe that drinaemg is sort of an expression of our long forgotten imaginations, fantasies (I'm not talking necessarily sexual!) which we want to carry out in real life, or fantasies we absolutely don't want to occur. Does that make any sense? Moral of my comment? The brain is definitely an amazing thing. Kristi

[Lori at Spinning Yellow]

Listening to all your wacky dream stories really made my day! Maybe I should start a meme: your recurring or strangest dream.

Funny that so many people dreamed of giving birth to something other than a baby!

Tracy & the weird girl - yes, I have kept track of the house and have, on occasion, driven past it. It would be out of my price range & certainly not at all like I remember it. But you never know ...

Tracy - I have the same never-finished-college dream where I don't know what to do with my kids and my husband and where am I going to live on campus craziness.

Cyndi - I'm not sure it is about being deep. It could just be that you sleep more soundly. Oh, and doesn't it make you wonder what our kids will think of us and our houses some day?

the weird girl - I am picturing The Shaggy Dog - LOL!

Jordan - wow, that is some dream! You;ll never forget that one!

[Jordan]

Wow! Those dreams are intense!! I have nothing like them, ever. It's fascinating to me. Okay, except when I was pregnant. Towards the end of my first pregnancy, I swear to God I dreamed I had given birth to a fully grown African-American woman. Honestly. I can still picture her curled up in the crib. How freaking weird is that?? I guess, when I think about it, who needs any other dreams the rest of her life after that one?

[the weirdgirl]

See, if I had this dream I would be looking up the house on real estate listings. It seems like someone is trying to tell you something. Maybe that spirit misses you.

All my anxiety dreams lately seem to involve way more body and facial hair than I am comfortable with. Picture the dog boy. I blame them on getting old. Damn you, age!

[Cyndi]

Wow, as the cousin who you visited it's nice to hear you talk so fondly of Glenfield Drive. You should know, I have those same types of memories of Foxcroft at Thanksgiving.

I have no recurring dreams, does that mean I'm not deep? Oh well!

[InTheFastLane]

Your dreams are very meaningful. I have very vivid dreams, but none that I can ascribe such meaning to. There was the one in which I gave birth to a fully grown man who walked across the delivery room with a full beard. Odd...

But, I think it is great that your have dreams that leave you peaceful and calm.

[Tracy]

My recurring stress dream is that I am told that all of my work experience has been one big internship and that I still have one semester of college to finish. In my dream I wrestle with how I will be able to move back to campus and still manage to care for my family.
As for places - if family is involved in my dream - I only ever have one setting - the house I grew up in. My parents haven't lived there for 16 years and many of our newest members of the family never even saw the place. Yet, they can all be in my dream and it will still be set in that house. Good or bad dream - doesn't matter. Strange, huh?
As for your house, Lori - do you ever find yourself looking at the real estate ads to see if it is for sale?

[floating in space]

Very interesting! I have the same recurring college dream as you, and when I was pregnant with my kids I always dreamed that were born cats. Strange.

[Kyla]

Weird! I used to have a recurring dream about a high-rise barn that only had chicken wire rather than walls, and I always fell off the top. It was always snowing. Weird.

[Niksmom]

Wow. I have no great insights but I can totally relate; have a similar dream sometimes. It's more about reliving something from the past thanit is about the place, though. (Cue Twilight Zone music!)

Very interesting piece!