December at USM - The Dream

In the early hours of Sunday morning, I was in the middle of a dream. It was as if it were today and my family and I were living in my mom's house. I was in a big room that was like a combo kitchen and lab working on something when my mom came in the room and we started arguing about something. It felt like we were rehashing an old argument and I was really frustrated that she was interrupting my work to have the same argument again. A friend of mine from school walked by us, causing me to stop for a moment and think about what we were doing. I realized that I could apply my USM skills to this argument, so I calmly said to my Mom, "I have a request for you. My request is that when I say blah de blah that you respond with blah de blah." (I can't remember the exact words here.) I felt really peaceful and complete and just at that moment Lexi walked into the room, all excited.

Lexi bounced over to me to show me the fish that she had just caught for dinner. Very pleased with herself she put it in storage in the kitchen and bounced off to her next adventure, leaving me with the fish. The fish was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen in my life. It was like a huge flounder (about 6 feet long) with an amazingly beautiful pattern of shimmering golden-green scales on its side. It was so beautiful that tears came to my eyes - it was like being in rapture.

I realized that we needed to preserve the fish, so I started covering it with the sand that it was resting on in the storage area. But this sand was home to dozens of sea turtle eggs and baby sea turtles began hatching out of the sand. They were far from water and I knew if I didn't help them they would dry out and die. I went to the big kitchen sink and filled a large spaghetti pot with water and took it over to the baby sea turtles.

And then I woke up. It was about 6am and I lay in bed, re-living the dream and pondering it's meaning. My mom has been dead for 14 years, but I often dream about her. Usually, we are on a college campus talking together. Every once in a while we have an argument. I hate the argument dreams. I wake up with knots in my stomach, feeling sad that I wasted my precious time with her arguing. This morning that feeling was even stronger. I knew this dream somehow related to my experience at USM the day before and my bedtime prayer. Thoughts and emotions were swirling around in me faster than I could put words to them. Was I literally supposed to save the sea turtles? But the fish was SO beautiful, too! Maybe I was supposed to help all animals. Why was my mom getting in the way of that by interrupting my work and arguing with me? Why was Lexi fishing for dinner?

And then the big question hit me: Was it an interaction with my mom when I was little that had led me to reject my spiritual/psychic self? It must have been. But I didn't want it to be. It couldn't be. Tears began slowing sliding down my cheeks. Mom was the only one who was with me when all that weird psychic stuff happened to me in my twenties. The stuff I couldn't explain or understand but felt deeply. The scary stuff I couldn't control that had an attractive edge of power and beauty to it. Like the time I helped Russian earthquake victims cross over in my sleep. That was a weird dream. And then the newspaper headline announced the devastation wreaked by a powerful earthquake in rural Russia. And how many times had the weird stuff happening in my "dreams" drive me to sleep on the couch in her living room? She would come out in the morning and see me and just know what had happened. She didn't have to say anything. The look on her face was all the love and support and understanding I needed. We didn't know what was happening, but she was my witness and my partner, and together we muddled through.

And Mom was the one who came to the hospital when Petey broke his back sledding and wouldn't leave until I passed on her posthumous message to Petey about what he needed to do to heal his back. And Mom was the one I clearly felt on the top of Mount Tam a few days after she died, bringing a smile of joy and communion to my face. And the day I'd been mountain biking and was so sad about her death that I stopped by the creek to cry, she was there, too, cheering me up, her sweet, positive energy swirling around me. She was the one who was always there, loving and supporting me when any "other-worldly" experience happened to me. It couldn't have been her that squelched my natural expression at such a young age! But I knew it was and I was tormented by that knowing. It left a heaviness in my body, a dread, a feeling that this was completely unacceptable.

And that yucky feeling stayed with me as I dejectedly showered and ate breakfast and headed out for my day of classes at USM.