Last night's dream:
My mom was living alone after my dad died.
We siblings had been watching over her, and
she felt like we were telling her what to do too much so she ran away.
We eventually found her in a small
town in Indiana – somewhat like GC or her childhood hometown.
I went to see how she was.
I found her along the main street “working” at a diner. She wasn’t actually employed there – just that
the owner-grill cook (a sort of Aunt Jemima-type person altho I never saw her
and she could have been a man) kind of looked out for her and let Mom
help. There were café-type tables for
the customers to sit at on the sidewalk in front of the diner. Mom stood outside near the door holding a
tray filled with cheeseburgers. They
looked really delicious: tasty, greasy, melted-cheesy burgers.
I guess Mom was sort of serving the hamburgers altho she wasn’t waitressing and I never saw anyone take one.
At one point Mom did pick up a triple-thick cheeseburger (3 meat
patties) and take a big bite then put it back on the tray I suppose for someone
else to select.
She was happy as a clam.
Pretty oblivious to anything going on around her, at times kind of
flighty but able to focus on whatever it was we talked about. At some point Mom removed a bunch of
silverware she had stored in her pocket.
She took two forks and intertwined the tines together to straighten the
ones that were bent. I got
the impression that she was familiar with the priest and church in town – that they
watched out over her.
She told me she worked at the hospital, too. I think she just sort of hung out there and
they were used to seeing her around and treated her like a likeable stray dog,
come and go as she pleased, everyone pleasantly greeting her.
We must have gone to her “apartment.” [Reminded me of Harrison Ford’s apartment in The Fugitive – the one in Chicago that
he rented from the Polish woman – altho Mom had only one room.] I remember Mom pointing to her green
rocker-recliner and saying Susan had given it to her. She mentioned Susan a couple other times in
the context that Susan had told her something or given her something. And this made me wonder why Susan had never
told us that she was in communication with Mom and where she was.
There was also something in the dream about Mom being
barefoot and walking on stones along a railroad track. I don’t quite know what that was about, but
it reminded me of the train tracks that run through the center of her childhood
hometown.
Basically, Mom was daft but happy. She giggled and brushed aside anything that could be worrisome. And everyone in the town looked out for
her. Kind of like Alfie Landau in GC.
