Sunday, April 22, 2007

What's Molly Dreaming Now? Edition 2

Since going full throttle on trying to slay my thesis, my dream life has been waning. Friday night, though, I had a very strange and vivid dream. I'll do this like the last one and give you the details and let you guys tell me what you think.

Honey and I have apparently moved to a new house which he bought without me having seen it. I am not upset by this; it was a good purchase and the previous owners left a lot of their old furniture so that saved us money and effort. I can't tell what city we're in. It's clearly some old East Coast American city with a colonial history: Philly, Baltimore, Williamsburg, I dunno. It is a monstrous townhouse in the middle of a row of townhouses. I'm not talking a big, modern townhouse like you see in developments all over the place. I mean a monstrous townhouse amidst other other monstrosities amidst the quaint, colonial historical part of town. For some reason, the Disney company has seen fit to run a monorail tunnel through the townhouses. Not through the living areas, but there's a tunnel beneath the first floor; like we don't have basements because the tunnel is in our basements. And the tunnel for this transport system emerges outside our kitchen window. We're not an end unit, but still the tunnel spits out and turns basically between our house and the neighbors. It's odd. Odder still, people emerge from the tunnel on foot, not just on the monorail cars. (Incidentally, here's an adorable diversion.)

Okay, so I've taken Babydog on a walk and come home and then I've gone out and run some more errands. Each time I come home, I comment on how I like the paint on the walls or how the old furniture still jives with my style or whatever. When I come back from running errands. I see Honey lying on the sofa with a tiny baby on his chest. The baby's wearing a pink onesie. I don't remember the dialogue that transpired between Honey and me, but for whatever reason it became apparent that this child was our daughter. ... and I didn't remember having had a baby.

So I take the baby into my arms - she's probably a month old - and try to become familiar with her. We haven't given her a name. She has a soft nest of dark hair, an incredibly round head, very round eyes and large, jutting, Stephen Colbert-shaped ears. Essentially, she looks nothing like Honey or me. I rifle through my memory and begin having vague recollections of being pregnant, but only 5 or 6 months so, not enough to have produced a baby. But I accept it and begin to grow comfortable with the idea that I have a baby - not that I am a mother, but that I have a baby. I'm happy that it's a girl. I then remember she was born on January 15, 2008. So it's now like April, 2008 in my dream. I hold up the baby by her armpits because she's able to hold her own head at this point, or at least do that weird neck-scrunch thing. And now, she's naked. I think to myself, "well, I hate January, but I guess I'll like it, now."* She begins to cry - scream really - and her mouth opens wider than anything I've ever seen. It's freakish and hilarious. She's like a wide-mouth bass or a cartoon baby (as illustrated above) and she's letting it roar. ... and that, we decide, she got from me.

The dream dissipated shortly after that. But what was weirdest to me was that I didn't feel an instant affinity for the baby. Honey and I were tickled by her and we were fully committed to caring for her, but it was more like she was a new curiosity than our child. I was not indifferent to her, but I wasn't inspired by her.

*side note, because I know VA Gal will say something: a ton of my favorite people are January babies, so I know the month in which one is born has no bearing on one's character. I'm just not a fan of January past, say, the 7th or 8th. If I could I would jump from January 10 directly to April 1, every year.

So what does my dream mean? ... a little history: a lot of our friends and family are having babies these days. We are in the process of replacing windows in our house. Have fun!

3 comments:

mommanator said...

Sounds like the end of things for ya ie the end of your thesis and the start of new beginnings- the baby was your Thesis- it was birthed and nutured by you, but now you aresoon onto other things- thats why the no feeling of attachment to it(the babe)

Jill said...

I like what mommanator said! You could add that the baby suddenly becoming naked is the equivalent of submitting it to your thesis review committee, or whatever group needs to see it. Ack! It's naked! No longer covered by the cute pink onesie of residing privately on your computer with no one looking at it but you.

I don't know what to say about the monorail - did you see the puppy one before or after the dream? I guess it and the new house have to do with going to new places, moving on with life.

Anonymous said...

I like Mommantor's analysis (and phff about January babies, hee hee).