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dream a little recurring dream with me
In a world where sense is not being made, there is one constant in my life: I keep dreaming the same dream over and over again. This dream takes place in or around my childhood home in Omaha, Nebraska. Mostly, the dreams take place in the house. Occasionally I’m across the street looking at the house, wondering if my mother is still there so I can visit. Sometimes she is in there, but she is always packing up to move. Other times, she is not there and I know - during the dream - that she has died. She sold the house in 1991 and died in 2008, but I keep going back to that neighborhood street of dreams.
I do not think I am looking for my mother so much as I am looking for the innocence of my childhood.
Five years ago, while awake, I went back to that house. I was stalking it on a “neighborhood walk” and the owner was in the yard. I introduced myself, telling her I grew up in the house, and she kindly took me on a tour. The renovations on the basement and main floor living space were so pronounced that memory-flashbacks were few. I returned the next week to give her a stained-glass replica of that house commissioned by my mother during the 1980s. I thought it appropriate that she now take ownership of it, and she graciously hung it in the dining room window facing the street where my mother always had it displayed. When I am in Omaha, it is a special joy for me to walk by and see it there, hanging in the window.
When I am not asleep and dreaming of my childhood house and neighborhood, I find myself wishing for the ability to click my heels, spin around three times, snap my fingers, or wiggle my nose - whatever it takes - and find myself transported back to the 70s when the worst thing happening in the world to my 13-year old mind wasn’t rampant pedophilia where no one seemingly gives a shit or the terrifying position of the second hand on the Doomsday Clock. It was the ongoing pollution problem, with the Keep America Beautiful anti-littering campaign on the TV every day reminding us to stop it. (The slogan was: “People Start Pollution. People Can Stop It.”) You remember the ads - the ones with the Sicilian actor-guy Espera Oscar de Corti dressed up like a Native American riding horseback.
I’m not saying I would shag-carpet the bathroom wall, but lately I feel really inclined to bust out some macrame hanging plant holders, paste floral wallpaper in the bedroom, hang some dayglo beads in the doorway, plaster wood-paneling to the office walls, and try to locate an avocado-green Frigidaire on eBay.
I really think this Brady Bunch-themed interior landscape will make me feel better.
My favorite reads, listens, and views from this past week/end:
Sir Ian McKellen on The Late Show
Marriane Williamson: We are all One Human Family
Anne LaMott’s Substack: Octopus
Podcast: The Bulwark Podcast (35:59)
Playlist: 70s Soothe
What I’m eating this week: a snack of yellow, orange, or red bell pepper halves (I don’t like the green ones) stuffed with cottage cheese and sprinkled with paprika, pepper, salt, and pumpkin seeds.
Blessings & Love,
Love the glass plates in that last photo and so very kind of the new owner of your childhood home to give you a tour and for you to give her the stained glass replica of it. My childhood home has been added on to twice and my sister lives in and I consider it "home" when going "home" but it really isn't home without my mother in it. Not my dad so much, he was a shop guy!