I’ve been having some pretty vivid dreams this month. Periods of intense dreams have been a lifelong blessing and affliction, and I’ve learned to look at these as significant signs. The dreams lately are indicative of changes and growth.
Early in the month, I dreamed of Housemate Sean, my heart dog who left for what pet owners like to call the Rainbow Bridge 7 years ago. The Rainbow Bridge in my estimation is not a specific permanent location but one of fluidity, like a cloud, because Sean is often not only present in my dreams but also in my waking hours. Sean told me it was OK for me to give his blanket, which I had been keeping safe and pristine since his death, to Rudy and Greta, my 8-year-old corgi and my 2-year-old German Shepherd puppy. Greta is still in her destructive phase, and we worry that she may never grow out of it. Her own blanket is full of holes and has spent more time in the backyard than its place near our bed (tugged with much effort through the doggie door). I told Sean as much.
“So what?” he responded. “Is it better to rot unused in a cedar chest, or loved and used by your dogs? It is just a blanket. It is not me.”
Fair enough. My dear Sean’s blanket now lies on the floor of our bedroom. At this time, it is being used respectfully. There are no teeth marks, and I have not yet had to retrieve it from the backyard. If Greta does destroy it (like most things below knee level in this house), then, in the words of Housemate Sean, “so what?”
In Thursday’s dream, my mother visited from Heaven and agreed to attend my 5:30 a.m. yoga class with me. My dreams often have a back story, a story of which I am aware of during the dream, but that I did not actually dream about. In real life, Mom and I had never talked about my yoga practice. But the back story in this dream was Mom had aways been suspicious of yoga because she had felt it was a kind of a pagan religion where we honor some strange god, go into trances, and conjure stuff best left unconjured. I assured her that we did not go into a trance, chant, conjure anything or spin our heads completely around. I was surprised when she agreed to attend, and assumed it meant her eyes were opened to the truth after she left us. I explained that our yoga instructor, Jason (a normal-ish 40ish-year-old married father of four), started the practice with a simple welcome invocation and then we would just do some stretches and bends and get familiar with the way our bodies work. She said it was fine. My real 5:30 class is remote, and I attend via Zoom from my home office. But in the dream my office door opened into a real yoga studio in which Jason and the other students sat. Mom walked confidently to the front of the room and sat down in lotus position. I noticed she was barefoot and dressed in taupe linen pajamas with a garnet scarf around her head.
Jason welcomed everyone to the class then picked up two thin dowel rods from the floor. “We will start the practice with my favorite Sanskrit worship chant” he said, then indicated that we should all pick up the rods in front of each of us. I was horrified. Knowing Mom as I did, I knew she would sit there and not make a fuss, but also would not be doing any chanting, and I would certainly hear about it after class. “I’m sorry, Mom. This is not what we usually do,” I whispered to her. She just smiled and picked up her rods.
Jason, banged his rods together twice like a band leader, “let’s begin.” He launched into a loud raucous chant I’d never heard before. He banged his rods in time on the floor and in the air, eyes closed, chanting, rocking his head back and forth like Stevie Wonder (again, Gen Zers, Google). I tried to keep up, all the while apologizing in a loud whisper to Mom. I heard her laugh.
I looked over and was shocked to see her not only keeping up with the chant as if she had sung it many times before, but also doing a heck of a job keeping beat with her rods with skill that would have given Sheila E a run for her money. (Gen Zers, please Goggle “Sheila E” for clarification). She was throwing her head back and shouting and banging those rods, evening spinning them between her fingers like a baton. Then she said “Oh, Diane. You worry too much.”
Now, my mother said, “you worry too much,” to me no less than a million times over the 54 years I knew her. It felt like an admonition, she always sounded annoyed. She didn’t like things she could not fix and, most of what I worried about was unfixable. This was especially true when I was a young teenager. Life between 12 and 16 was hell for me. Some of it was normal unavoidable teenage angst. But I felt powerless over doing stupid acts while trying to cure the angst, and the more stupid acts done in an effort to fix the first stupid acts. Mom always seemed so irritated by my tears and grief. I know now that she was not irritated by my tears and grief, but by her inability to fix them. She just didn’t know how to adequately express that. “You worry too much,” was often followed by “Just ignore them,” as if that would finally fix it all. Neither phrase was helpful to a young teen in pain. Like all girls of that age, I needed validation. I needed assurance that, yes, these things would pass, but also that my struggle was real and acknowledged.
In the dream, her statement wasn’t out of irritation or avoidance. “You worry too much,” she said again, then put down her rods and patted my knee soothingly. “Most of what you worry about never happens. Everything always works out for you in the end.”
“That’s the point,” I said. “Worry keeps the problem in the forefront so I can defend myself. Nothing can come out of the dark without my knowing about it, because I stay aware. I avoid unpleasant surprises by being ready for them.”
“But you have it all wrong,” she smiled. “Things don’t work out for you because you worry, things work out for you because the Universe is on your side. We are all looking out for you, we are all rooting for you. We want all your dreams to come together. Sometimes, your worry gets in the way of the work.”
Then she stood, executed a perfect downward facing dog, stood in a perfectly balanced tree pose, bowed her head, and said, “Mom-can’t-stay,” and floated away.
OK, I made that last paragraph up; the end of the dream was a bunch of gobbledygook then I woke up. But I thought “Mom-can’t-stay” would be a perfect line at the end if the dream were a movie. Unfortunately, dreams don’t normally work that way.
Truth is, changes aren’t just coming now, they are coming all the time. The only thing that remains the same is that things change. I think that’s from a song or a poem or something. Anyway, growth in response to change is the important thing. Growth is coming. I’ll try not to worry about it.
