Monday, July 2, 2012

Long Weekend

Well, it's nearing its end this long weekend is.
It's late in the day, early in the evening, and as I relax on the couch with a book, I reflect that the same way certain lighting flatters people, it also flatters places, my loft being no exception.
Dusk is its best time. The gray-based green on my dining room and kitchen walls seem to have a patina at dusk, and my ceilings and walls seem to blend into one.
The floors look clean, honey-coloured and muted, and there are none of the sharp angles that bright sunlight can lend to a place during the height of the afternoon.

I had a full 100% Carolyn-day today. I guiltily admit to not leaving the house, not even for the run I had planned (discarded the plan with a few glances at the tv weather station). It was just too hot, too bright, too..everything.

I woke up, with the birds, at 6:30 am. It was bright, then, too. A more ambitious runner would have taken this as a sign to get that coffee brewing and get ready to GO, but this runner was in too much pain. Even last night's heating pad on the back did little to quell my body's insistance that today was going to be a 'day off' and not just from work.
I padded about my apartment for a good ninety minutes upon waking, sipping water, checking emails, looking out the window, longing (guilty again) for clouds, before doing something I never do: go back to bed, not just to read for a bit, but to actually sleep some more. And I did, falling back into sleep within minutes, for another two hours.

I had the type of late-morning dreams that imprint you for the day. Really, the last dream was more of a nightmare, but a nightmare with a message.
I was in my childhood home, the one we moved from when I was aged fifteen, so, yes, twenty-three years ago, but there it was in my subconscious, brilliantly detailed as ever, the stacked town that it was, the many steps, inside and out.
I was there with my parents, me, the age I am now, them, the age they were when we lived there (just a bit older than I am now). Something outside was threatening to the three of us. Something outside, an unseen, but rather felt, menace. In the dream, I called 9-1-1, to be connected with an extremely unsympathetic operator who, as I realized during the course of the call, was going to be of no help to me or my parents whatsoever. I was powerless to stop what was happening outside. I warned my parents, who were downstairs in what was, when we lived in this house, our family room, not to come up. It was dangerous. My father came upstairs, armed with a knife, (I have no idea where he found this knife), and motioned to me he would take care of things outside.
I woke up before this part of the dream-nightmare progressed, as somehow, we always seem to.
The dream stayed with me as I awoke, and I turned its meaning over and over in my head, and two things came to me;
One, I felt as I always do when I dream of my dad, that he just wanted to pay a little visit, say hello, and if my dream storyline is less than stellar, well, who is he to re-write it?
Two, he was hell-bent in the dream (my dream) to protect his family despite the fact that a) it was a dream, and b) he's dead.
That part of my subconscious, I reason, the part that lets me return so vividly to my childhood home, still allows me to also revisit that part of ourselves that believes, (we have to) that our parents will always be there to protect us from the dangers of the outside world. That they will never leave us to fend for ourselves. Which, of course, we reasonably know is not true, but as I mentioned one of my friends said a few weeks back, we can't conceptualize this shift.  When a parent dies, that is. It's imaginable, but not considered. It's just a concept, a remote one, as all of these types of thoughts are.
So, there, in my dream, in the safe stacked townhome of my childhood, my father continues to take care of things and I am able to relax and somehow be kept safe.

These thoughts, while comforting, are also extremely weighty. Today, when I called my mother on the phone, she picked up the receiver and paused before speaking, something my father always, habitually did, and I had, for one split-second, the thought that I was about to hear his voice, distinct and remembered, but it was not to be. Of course, not a logical thought, but my mind crossed over to dream-territory where anything was possible. My mother said "Hello?" and I cleared my mind and made no mention of my whimsical world.

So yes, that's the end of the weekend for me, in a nutshell.
The things I haven't done today far outweigh the things I did, or should have, or wanted to.
A full moon looms tomorrow, giving reason for alot of the strife surrounding the week that just passed.
My short sojourn to Maine also awaits, giving me some buoyancy and defense for the coming week that might hold  more moon-weirdness, hot-weather-oddness, storm-bringing chaos, and then, my flight touching down, some well-earned calmness. Seeing the face of my husband, the slant of the sand as I run beside the Atlantic, bites of lobster, sips of American chardonnay.

Summer awaits, even if I sat it out today.
Happy (holiday) Monday...

2 comments:

  1. You should have seen me sit it out this weekend, too. Like A Champ. I think I might have gone a little stir crazy by Sunday night. Ha.

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  2. I'm so there J.
    Hang in there.
    :)

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