Baby's back
I dreamed about a lost baby all night last night. First she was a little brown and white puppy I found on the beach. She was wearing all kinds of beautiful collars and tags around her neck, but I couldn't read any of them – didn't quite want to read them, because that would mean I'd have to give her back to her people, and I wanted to keep her. I worried that Tater would be jealous and I held her up for him to smell, so I could quickly pull her away if he tried to snap at her. Then she was a baby person, five months old. I didn't know where she came from and didn't have anything to feed her. "Try some blueberry yogurt," I said, holding the spoon to her lips. "It's full of antioxidants!" She didn't want yogurt, though, or anything else. Finally it occurred to me that at her age, probably all she really wanted to do was nurse. But who was going to nurse her? I felt desperate to figure it out, so I could keep her. I woke up crying.
As I stood under a hot shower, slowly waking up, I realized it was Anna Nicole Smith's baby I was dreaming about. I hope somebody is holding her and loving her and protecting her from all this heavyosity. I hope she grows up happy and safe and grounded and real, and that she has a wonderful life. I guess I hope that for everyone.
I used to have those dreams about finding a baby all the time in my early 20s – probably once or twice a month. Sometimes it was my own baby, sometimes I just found it somewhere, but in all cases my main concern was always how to get rid of it, by getting it to a place where it would be taken care of by anyone but me. The primary emotion of those dreams was anxiety and panic – I'm not capable of taking care of a baby! It's beautiful, but it isn't mine, and I can't do this! I don't want to do this. But I don't want anything bad to happen to the baby, either.
By my late 20s the lost baby dream had gone away and I started having a recurring dream about missing a plane, being stranded in a city far away from home and not being able to get back. That one lasted from about 1992 through ... well, early last year. Over the years, the dream changed until I had made peace with not knowing where I was or how to get back to familiar ground, and the panic of being lost was replaced by curiosity: what is this place like?
And now the baby's back. It's the first time I've had this dream in almost 20 years, and it's changed now, too – this time, I knew I could take care of the baby, and I wanted to. I wasn't sure how it was all going to work out, but the fear this time was not of keeping the baby, but of losing her.
It's always been clear to me that these baby dreams aren't really about babies – they're about my creative life and my fear of not being good enough to put my work out there and really try to DO something. So it's pretty exciting to have this particular dream right now, at a time when I'm tentatively starting to ramp up a bit and actually work again after so many years of not – I'm taking it as a sign that I really am stronger and braver now, and that I really can do this. Though I'm still in the process of getting clear on what "this" is going to be.
I've been consumed with art and design lately, drawing and doodling and making little things here and there – it feels like how you practice scales on the piano before you start to play for real. Yesterday, feeling excited and inspired, I went to the websites of a couple of art schools around here and promptly descended into a deep pit of anxiety about how I could never go to art school, never even get IN to art school, and most importantly, never pay for art school – this was the biggest obstacle in my mind, after looking at the tuition and fee schedules. My entire annual salary would barely cover a year of tuition at the main school I'd love to go to.
It was so distressing to feel so excited, and then so crushed, all within just a few minutes! I find it's still very hard for me to be with those feelings when they come up – I desperately want to get away from them by any means necessary, be it food, television, shopping, conversation, whatever. But I hung out there until I calmed down, and then took myself over to the website for the local junior college, which also has an art department, and which costs only twenty bucks per credit (instead of $1200), and which may be a good place to take a few baby steps toward learning some of the skills I'm interested in picking up.
Thinking again about Anna Nicole Smith, I'm thinking about those words, "I'm sorry," and trying to think what I would feel comfortable saying instead, when somebody dies. The only thing that comes to mind is "I'm grateful." Grateful for that person's life, grateful for all our lives, for being here together, for being able to feel, for being able to love, for remembering, for forgetting. That's what I really feel, and it's basically the opposite of feeling sorry. But I think people wouldn't know how to respond if I actually said that.
I guess the way I see it is that our being here at all is such a tiny blip in the eternity of time when we're not here, that when someone dies the main thing I feel is just a very strong sense of awe at the mystery of it all, and gratitude for having been here to know them. Sad to miss them, sometimes even devastated. But happy to have known someone I loved enough to miss.
On May 10 it will have been 25 years since my best friend from high school was killed in a car crash. That was my first experience of the death of someone I loved. Right now three people I know are dying, and the Jeeps's decline seems to be accelerating as well. Also, the trees are starting to blossom, new little lambs are frolicking in every field (complete with long, joyfully wagging tails), there's more and more daylight every day, and we're finally getting some serious rain around here, which always livens things up. I feel a little bit preoccupied with death and dying, and at the same time, happy and excited about life and living, learning, building, creating – all of it.
I like the way it feels to hold all of this in my heart, all at the same time. I feel like I'm really here.
P.S. I practiced slowing down last night by watching four chocolate chip cookies baking through the glass window in the door of the toaster oven. It took 17.5 minutes for them to turn from white to brown, and at such a slow pace, every tiny bubble of butter sizzling, every chunk of chocolate melting from matte to glossy, the first tendrils of aroma curling out through the steam vent ... every little change feels miraculous and worthy of celebration.
As I stood under a hot shower, slowly waking up, I realized it was Anna Nicole Smith's baby I was dreaming about. I hope somebody is holding her and loving her and protecting her from all this heavyosity. I hope she grows up happy and safe and grounded and real, and that she has a wonderful life. I guess I hope that for everyone.
I used to have those dreams about finding a baby all the time in my early 20s – probably once or twice a month. Sometimes it was my own baby, sometimes I just found it somewhere, but in all cases my main concern was always how to get rid of it, by getting it to a place where it would be taken care of by anyone but me. The primary emotion of those dreams was anxiety and panic – I'm not capable of taking care of a baby! It's beautiful, but it isn't mine, and I can't do this! I don't want to do this. But I don't want anything bad to happen to the baby, either.
By my late 20s the lost baby dream had gone away and I started having a recurring dream about missing a plane, being stranded in a city far away from home and not being able to get back. That one lasted from about 1992 through ... well, early last year. Over the years, the dream changed until I had made peace with not knowing where I was or how to get back to familiar ground, and the panic of being lost was replaced by curiosity: what is this place like?
And now the baby's back. It's the first time I've had this dream in almost 20 years, and it's changed now, too – this time, I knew I could take care of the baby, and I wanted to. I wasn't sure how it was all going to work out, but the fear this time was not of keeping the baby, but of losing her.
It's always been clear to me that these baby dreams aren't really about babies – they're about my creative life and my fear of not being good enough to put my work out there and really try to DO something. So it's pretty exciting to have this particular dream right now, at a time when I'm tentatively starting to ramp up a bit and actually work again after so many years of not – I'm taking it as a sign that I really am stronger and braver now, and that I really can do this. Though I'm still in the process of getting clear on what "this" is going to be.
I've been consumed with art and design lately, drawing and doodling and making little things here and there – it feels like how you practice scales on the piano before you start to play for real. Yesterday, feeling excited and inspired, I went to the websites of a couple of art schools around here and promptly descended into a deep pit of anxiety about how I could never go to art school, never even get IN to art school, and most importantly, never pay for art school – this was the biggest obstacle in my mind, after looking at the tuition and fee schedules. My entire annual salary would barely cover a year of tuition at the main school I'd love to go to.
It was so distressing to feel so excited, and then so crushed, all within just a few minutes! I find it's still very hard for me to be with those feelings when they come up – I desperately want to get away from them by any means necessary, be it food, television, shopping, conversation, whatever. But I hung out there until I calmed down, and then took myself over to the website for the local junior college, which also has an art department, and which costs only twenty bucks per credit (instead of $1200), and which may be a good place to take a few baby steps toward learning some of the skills I'm interested in picking up.
Thinking again about Anna Nicole Smith, I'm thinking about those words, "I'm sorry," and trying to think what I would feel comfortable saying instead, when somebody dies. The only thing that comes to mind is "I'm grateful." Grateful for that person's life, grateful for all our lives, for being here together, for being able to feel, for being able to love, for remembering, for forgetting. That's what I really feel, and it's basically the opposite of feeling sorry. But I think people wouldn't know how to respond if I actually said that.
I guess the way I see it is that our being here at all is such a tiny blip in the eternity of time when we're not here, that when someone dies the main thing I feel is just a very strong sense of awe at the mystery of it all, and gratitude for having been here to know them. Sad to miss them, sometimes even devastated. But happy to have known someone I loved enough to miss.
On May 10 it will have been 25 years since my best friend from high school was killed in a car crash. That was my first experience of the death of someone I loved. Right now three people I know are dying, and the Jeeps's decline seems to be accelerating as well. Also, the trees are starting to blossom, new little lambs are frolicking in every field (complete with long, joyfully wagging tails), there's more and more daylight every day, and we're finally getting some serious rain around here, which always livens things up. I feel a little bit preoccupied with death and dying, and at the same time, happy and excited about life and living, learning, building, creating – all of it.
I like the way it feels to hold all of this in my heart, all at the same time. I feel like I'm really here.
P.S. I practiced slowing down last night by watching four chocolate chip cookies baking through the glass window in the door of the toaster oven. It took 17.5 minutes for them to turn from white to brown, and at such a slow pace, every tiny bubble of butter sizzling, every chunk of chocolate melting from matte to glossy, the first tendrils of aroma curling out through the steam vent ... every little change feels miraculous and worthy of celebration.
Labels: dreams
3 Comments:
life just good
I just love how you describe those cookies!
I have those lost baby dreams, too. They always start out as babies and then they shrink down to the size of a gerbil or an insect (usually becoming a gerbil or an insect in the process) and slip through my fingers and run away. I've always chalked them up to general anxiety, but maybe there's something more significant going on? Probably not in my case.
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