Tonight, the theater kids and I are all returning to DuPage County to see "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat," performed by our former theater group. It's the last night of the run, so we'll attend the cast party afterward (and be the last ones to leave, if my kids have anything to say about it...!).
There are a number of kids who are graduating out of the program now, so it will be bittersweet to watch them in their last show. We all remember their first auditions--some of them pretty lame, indeed! What a long way they've come.
Since the cast party will probably go into the wee hours, we're planning to spend the night with friends and go to our old church again on Sunday.
Last week, after our wonderful visit there, I had a house dream. Whenever I dream about houses, they are usually significant dreams, with layers of meanings. This one wasn't too hard to interpret:
I dreamed that "our house" (it wasn't either our IL home or our WI home) had to be moved, for some reason, and the company that moved it did it in layers. First they somehow unattached the second floor and moved it with something like a giant forklift; then they moved the ground floor with another.
In the dream, I didn't see the house reattached and set up in its new location...but I went back to the old site to see what they did about the basement. I wondered about my pear tree, which was planted relatively near the foundation--I had a vague idea of digging it up and trying to move it, too, but when I got there, it was gone, most of the basement was gone, and what was left of the basement had some small dolls and toys in it that I didn't recognize.
Then I woke up and immediately knew that the way the house was moved a floor at a time related to the way we moved in stages--we "moved" from our church home (by driving up here every Sunday) over a year before we moved out of our physical home there. In a way, all that is left, now, in IL is our "basement"--the foundation of friends and memories that we have there.
In the dream, I was disturbed to find the dolls and toys that I didn't recognize, and I don't know exactly what they represent. Perhaps it was my fears that as we return, it will begin to seem unfamiliar? The sense that literally, someone else's belongings are in my old home? Perhaps I feared that these items did belong to us, but I no longer remembered them--maybe a fear that I'll forget things from "our old life" that I don't want to lose?
The whole dream had an emotional component of my home being torn apart--and nowhere in the dream was it all put back together. (I look forward to that dream, when it comes!)
So, much as I will enjoy this return visit...I'm aware that, to some degree, it will probably have a heart-rending effect....
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2 comments:
The other thing that strikes me about this dream is that it may be looking toward the future. While home and life are full and full of children at this moment, I was reminded last week how grown-up your oldests are! Could it be that it sometimes feels that the pieces are coming apart?
I have always said that parenting is about working oneself out of a job. We want to capture the perfect theoretical snapshot of family at a moment in time when life is full and wonderful. And yet, there is never any truth in that snapshot, except for in that one moment. Life is always moving on; children are always growing up.
It is sad only if we think of it that way. If we think of our calling as bearing and carrying and birthing and raising and teaching and, eventually, pushing them out of the nest, then the house will literally come apart and be reconstituted in some way, as yet unknown.
Just another thought for you to ponder! It was so good to see you last week.
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