A Lesson in a Dream
I wake up tired from running in my dreams. Not running for exercise, but running from one place to another trying to accomplish a task and always being thwarted. I can’t remember now what we were even trying to achieve. That’s typically how those dreams go. It’s not the task at hand that matters but the fact that it cannot be accomplished that is so agonizingly frustrating. The last thing I remember is going from store to store with my mom not finding whatever it was that we were looking for.
We had told my husband we would bring him lunch but when I looked at the clock it was 3 pm. I could feel my anxiety tensing every muscle in my body as I thought about how annoyed he would likely be. Of course, he wouldn’t call or text to see what had delayed me or where I was, adding to the sense of disappointment I had caused. Side note: This part of the story is all internal and something to “unpack” on another day. In real life he would not have been annoyed, would have fed himself and wouldn’t have bothered me with a text. I would have internalized that lack of communication as annoyance with me. This internal dialogue is something that I am continually working on with my therapist. Hey Dr., aren’t you proud of my recognition of the issue?
Ok, back to the dream. The primary distraction from our original mission (whatever it was) that I vividly remember is how excited I became when I found a bag of those little pastel green, yellow, and pink butter mints with white sugar specks on them. I remembered how my mom, my Granny (her mom), and I would share them when I was a child. I would call them rainbow mints but my mom would call them by their formal name, nonpareils. When I showed them to her thinking it would be a moment for us to reminisce together she said “Oh those are cute. I wonder how the green ones taste.” I wanted to scream! Of course she knew what these were and loved them. She just didn’t remember that she knew what they were. Then I woke up. It was time to get my daughter ready for daycare.
Though the mints come in three different colors, they all taste the same. When I was younger though, my mom and granny and I would debate which color tasted the best. It was silly and subjective, but it was a fun game to play. I woke up mad at myself for not allowing my mom to just ask the question. Why couldn’t I pretend we were playing the game all over again?
The dream likely stemmed from a recent video chat my two and a half year old daughter Luna and I had with my mom. While we were talking, Luna mentioned that she wanted a snack. My mom proceeded to leave the screen and head to her kitchen to “see what she could find.” She was not playing a game. She was answering a need. She has spent her entire adult life providing for those around her. She was a freaking phenomenal mother and likely did more than she should have (ultimately spoiling my brother and me) by more than once a week preparing a homemade dish 4 different ways to appease everyone at dinner. She taught children with learning disabilities, volunteered with our church, received two graduate degrees, and was an all around quiet and humble overachiever.
When her mom was diagnosed with dementia, she and my dad finished our downstairs storage area, turning it into a fully functional apartment for my Granny. When my dad’s mom was moved to an assisted living facility, it wasn’t near one of the other four siblings my dad had but near our family for my mom to be the one to check on her weekly and sometimes daily, often sneaking in sugary sweets my Nana was technically not supposed to have. She would always be the last one to sit down at the dinner table, driving me crazy with the amount of times she would ask if anyone needed anything else and making sure the answer was finally no before tending to her own nutritional needs. I have one child, am in between jobs, and often fix refrigerated ravioli with a jar of tomato sauce or the incredibly easy breakfast for dinner. Just last night our family meal consisted of tuna salad sandwiches and fresh fruit. Where is my gold star? I’m exhausted doing a tenth of the things she did. I honestly will forever be in awe at how she managed to do what she did for so long without having a visible mental breakdown.
So when my mom came back to the screen with Goldfish and proceeded to try and share with Luna, she was doing all she knows to do - take care of others. My daughter, not phased one bit since she regularly plays this game with her other grandparents in turn “shared” her snack with her Gran Jan. Instead of allowing that moment to be special for what it was, two individuals from generations apart sharing a playful snack time that neither of them are likely to remember, I focused on what I would remember, which is the fact that my mom could not delineate what was real and what was pretend. I did not correct my mom out loud. I held it in. That is the baby step of improvement I have made. The fact is, I’m the one struggling with living in reality and not wanting to go back to this pretend world where my mom has all her faculties and is able to interact the way she once did. I’m the one who needs to work on being present, letting go of the past, and living with the parent I have now while honoring the fact that she is the same person.
