Archive for March, 2011
Tonight I was having dinner with David, Kelly (age 18) and Jack (age 7) in a restaurant.
“Are you excited about your birthday?” I asked Kelly who will turn nineteen at the beginning of April.
“No way,” she said. For her birthday, she’d already bought a short dress–I asked if it was a shirt–the color of tomatoes and six inch wedge sandals that would send her height to over six feet. But she hasn’t decided what she wants to do. Her dad and I nixed the hotel room with ten (yeah, right) of her closest friends to do what? Sit around, eat popcorn, and watch movies on the hotel room TV? I don’t think so. I offered to pay for her flight and room in Vegas when she turns twenty-one. But like mother like daughter she wants instant gratification. So here we are talking about a limo or dinner and a show or…
“I don’t want to turn nineteen,” Kelly said. I studied my little girl who was turning into a woman. I didn’t want her to turn nineteen either.
“If I could, I’d give anything to go back in time,” she said with tears in her eyes. And together we went back when she was a happy elementary school aged girl, playing Barbies and having slumber parties with her best friends. From the time Kelly walked, she danced. She pirouetted around the dining room table when we had dinner. Later when she was on a cheerleading team, she showed us the latest cheer at dinner. “I’d be young again in a heartbeat.”
Kelly said the same thing about turning eighteen. She wanted nothing to do with it. She knew it was a number that separated her from her childhood and adulthood, and she clung to the other side.
“What age would you be, if you could go back in time?” David asked.
“I’d be eighteen, and stay there,” Jack said. This is not surprising he picked this number since for him eighteen means you can be a soldier. Thank god his aspirations have turned to becoming geologist.
“I’d go back and be thirty-two,” I said going back in time again to a simpler time. Today it just seems too complicated.
I blame the weather, the restlessness of spring mowing over winter, and the world in chaos. I blame my serotonin levels and know when these get higher, I will, too. Then I’ll be able handle my little girl turning nineteen.
Would you go back in time if you could?
We do not see things as they are.
We see them as we are.
~ The Talmud ~
David S. Martin Photography
What do you see?
“Father, O father! what do we here
In this land of unbelief and fear?
The Land of Dreams is better far,
Above the light of the morning star.” WILLIAM BLAKE, The Land of Dreams
There must be something in the air. Maybe it was the supermoon last Saturday. Maybe having the biggest and brightest moon in years is wreaking havoc on my subconscious. Is there a tie between the moon and dreaming? Because I’ve been dreaming a lot, wicked, vivid dreams. But it could also be the world is in turmoil, Japan’s earthquake and tsunami. Then there’s the Middle East and Libya, North Korea, etc., etc.
William Dement, a pioneer U.S. sleep researcher, said, “Dreaming permits each and every one of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives.”
I’ve been insane with dreams. The other night I dreamed I was driving my car, a red Volvo (I really drive a gray Mitsubishi) with Jack in the back seat. All of the sudden the street opened up and swallowed my car. My car was submerged in a lake and both Jack and I escaped. What does it mean? Dreaming is all about symbols. According to Dream Moods, driving a car means I’m traveling along my life path. Driving where I can’t see the road indicates I don’t have direction or goals. Drowning means I’m overwhelmed by emotions. If I were to drown, it means an emotional rebirth. Funny, my anxiousness, being pulled in a million directions with work and at home (even Jack in the backseat is probably a symbol of the fact I’ve been putting my kids in the “backseat”) is visiting me in my sleep. My future is uncertain (but aren’t all of ours) and this is being played out at night. Maybe during the day I need to slow down, breathe, focus and discover what my goals are.
Last night I dreamed I was renewing my vows to David. Based on the Dream Moods site, I’m happily married to David. It highlights our commitment to each other, and could mean a new phase in our lives. Except who’s that? My first husband looking scraggly with a mustache and a long beard. A mustache means you’re hiding something, a part of your personality. A beard? A long beard means wisdom. And dreaming of your ex means you need to consider what lesson you learned the first time around. Maybe my dreaming about my ex attending my renewal ceremony means that I’m wiser and is a reminder to not repeat the mistakes I’ve made in the past.
“In dreams the mind is constantly giving you substitutes just to protect sleep. And the same is happening while you are awake. The mind is giving you substitutes just to protect your sanity; otherwise you will be scattered in fragments.” OSHO, The Book of Secrets.
Want to remember your dreams? Here are some suggestions:
- Clear your mind before you go to bed.
- Have a regular bedtime and wake up time.
- Avoid alcohol, medication and any other substance that can prevent you from remembering your dreams.
- Keep a dream journal, notebook or tape recorder by your bed so you can record your dreams.
- Do not get out of bed immediately. Instead stay in bed and try to remember your dreams.
- Write down as many of the details of your dreams as you can remember. Don’t judge and don’t try to interpret your dreams right away, just write.
- Draw pictures if that helps you to remember your dreams.
- Don’t get discouraged. Remembering (and recording) your dreams takes practice.
“The general function of dreams is to try to restore our psychological balance by producing dream material that re-establishes, in a subtle way, the total psychic equilibrium.” CARL JUNG, Man and His Symbols
That’s what I’m trying to do, restore my psychic equilibrium. What about you?
- What famous person have you been told you look like?
- What historical event do you wish you could have witnessed?
- Do you believe in the power of the moon?
- Should you shield your child from unhappiness? From the truth if it hurt her?
- If you could be on a TV show, which one would it be and what part would you play? Or would it be a new part?
The 8.9 magnitude earthquake in Japan last week, the subsequent tsunami and now the threat of a nuclear disaster, are all reminders of our tenuous existence on this planet. This truth brings me to my knees. It seems there are daily reminders I have no control over anything.
This inevitably intensifies the constant hum of panic I live with. Last month at Mary Karr’s live interview, she talked about her anxiety. She’d gone to the doctor where she was informed she has an extraordinary amount of cortisol in her blood. Cortisol is the hormone that’s released from the adrenal gland, the fight or flight hormone. I’m sure if I were to get mine tested, my cortisol levels would be through the roof. When you’re raised in a household that’s chaotic, as a child you’re always ready to fight or bolt. As a teenager and adult, this response goes underground but you find other ways to cope. Mine was through controlling my food and exercise, and ultimately how my body looked. And while I’ve come a long way, Baby, when the world is threatened by a cataclysmic event like the Japanese earthquake (and the Chile and Haiti earthquakes before that), I panic. Living in Southern California, means the threat of the BIG ONE is always present. Since I can remember, the experts have been warning the BIG ONE is coming. We need to be prepared. Get ready…or else!
First I panic, and then I gather information on how to protect my family and me. I copy off (AGAIN!) the emergency earthquake kit I should have at the house and in my car. I learn about bolting down the hot water heater, finding the gas shut off, and replacing batteries in the smoke detectors. I’ve bought canned food and bottled water for when the BIG ONE happens, because it’s going to happen. It’s for sure happening. It’s just a matter of time. I locate the flashlights and make sure there are fresh batteries in them. I make a list of all the supplies we need like a radio to get information when our phones and televisions don’t work. I draft an emergency exit plan. In my mind, I obsess over how I’ll contact David, Molly, Kelly and Jack when we’re separated by the BIG ONE. I need to have a plan because the BIG ONE is coming. And then weeks go by, maybe months, and I forget about the emergency plans. The bottled water and canned foods sit forgotten in the basement gathering dust. Why don’t I follow through and make sure once and for all I have all the things my family needs to be protected? To me it’s like completing a will (another thing I need to do). I feel as soon as I sign on the dotted line of my will, God will say, “Okay, she’s done on this planet.” If I get all the things together to survive an earthquake, God will say, “Okay, here’s the Big One.”
This makes no sense. My rational mind scoffs at these thoughts. That’s where prayer and faith come in. I was raised Catholic. When I was a child, until the age of ten or so, I’d hear adults and some kids say they didn’t believe in God. I was so sure in my belief, it was hard to imagine others who didn’t understand there was a higher power. Fast forward thirty plus years, and now I’m not so sure. Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the world is awesome, that giving birth is a miracle and I can feel something bigger at play when I’m near the ocean or in a forest or out in the desert. But I envy the child I was who believed so fiercely in a God who would protect me. I envy those who believe in whatever god(s) they worship and admire those with faith that even if the BIG ONE takes them or their family, it was God’s will and there is a better life waiting for them.
How did you react to the earthquake in Japan?
Postscript: I was driving home tonight and heard this poem on NPR’s “Writer’s Almanac.”
Prayer for Our Daughters
by Mark Jarman
May they never be lonely at parties
Or wait for mail from people they haven’t written
Or still in middle age ask God for favors
Or forbid their children things they were never forbidden.
May hatred be like a habit they never developed
And can’t see the point of, like gambling or heavy drinking.
If they forget themselves, may it be in music
Or the kind of prayer that makes a garden of thinking.
May they enter the coming century
Like swans under a bridge into enchantment
And take with them enough of this century
To assure their grandchildren it really happened.
May they find a place to love, without nostalgia
For some place else that they can never go back to.
And may they find themselves, as we have found them,
Complete at each stage of their lives, each part they add to.
May they be themselves, long after we’ve stopped watching.
May they return from every kind of suffering
(Except the last, which doesn’t bear repeating)
And be themselves again, both blessed and blessing.
“Prayer for Our Daughters” by Mark Jarman, from Bone Fires: New and Selected Poems. © Sarabande Books, 2011. Reprinted with permission.
