Dreams Are Back

I'm having dreams again. It feels like it's been months since I've remembered them, probably because I was on the coma-inducing allergy medication Zyrtec, which insured that I conked out and slept the sleep of the dead pretty much every night. I'm on the more human-friendly Claritin now, so some dreams are making their way through to the conscious side once again. And I'm finding them quite interesting.

Friday night's dream was this: my mom is planning an epic, medieval-sized party, one worthy of a Douglas Sirk film or an episode of Dynasty. She has made yards and yards of itemized lists and is now subjecting my stepdad and I to reviewing all of them. They're all written on these mini yellow-lined pads, like shrunken legal briefs. Some are written in her neat elementary-school script; others are scrawled, like they are in real life when she is in one of her manic phases and sends us all incomprehensible letters explaining herself.

So Dad and I are sitting there reviewing her lists with her--seating charts and decorations and entertainment and the like--and I start to get that itchy feeling I do with her in real life when she just goes on and on about her most recent project and you just have to listen and nod and smile. It's like playing school with Addie: she's the teacher, and your job is to simply sit and be told what to do.

I don't remember much else except this: for the party, Mom has commissioned a special trompe l'oeil painting on the wall in an "oriental" theme. It seems really tacky to me, which is odd, because my mom's taste is actually very sophisticated. But on this dream wall, there are giant geishas, gaudily painted, making their way around the kitchen. Then there is this blank spot, and my mom explains that this is where portraits of the family will be painted. Except she can't bring herself to get them up there. She shows me photographs of each of us that can be used to make the mural, and in mine, I have baggy cargo pants and a t-shirt on. Of course it wouldn't look right for me to be up there with those geishas.

Of course my being there would ruin the tableau.

In real life, my mom is about to turn sixty, and is planning a huge party to celebrate (as she should). E. and the girls and I will go a few days earlier, spend some time in McCall, and then meet my mom for dinner on her actual birthday. We won't be at the actual party at all. We will be missing.

And that's just fine with me.