Friday, February 13, 2009

Oh Lucy, I'm hooome!

I got home from work and was telling a grandmotherly figure about my day. I said something about an issue with a wiki, and she said it was important to get the thing fixed.

Thinking back, I don't recognize the layout of the house, and I don't recognize the Latino woman who spoke with an accent. I knew her in the dream.

There was some issue about a check she had given at church that day. I assumed she had been to Mass because it was a workday, and she was probably Mexican. (I am not Roman Catholic.) She was on the phone trying to call a woman at her church about it when I got home. She was frazzled because of this and because of a baby somewhere in the house who was calling out unintelligibly. A few times, she raised her voice to be heard and to say she'd be there soon.

As I left the front of the house, I passed by a kitchen on the right where a Latino guy about my age was doing something. Again, I knew him in the dream, but I'm not sure what our relationship was. I thought about saying "Buenos dias" but didn't because I wasn't sure whether the greeting was linguistically appropriate.

Making two left turns, I got to what I assume was my bedroom. I think I emptied my pockets there but don't remember specific items. I could still hear the baby calling, but being closer didn't make it sound any less odd.

I go into the room in the back of the house on the right where the baby was, and he was barely floating face-up in an inflatable pool on the bed. "Oh my God! C----!" I shouted. I did recognize the baby: he was an infantized version, but a big baby, of my friends' son. He was bobbing and made his weird noise when his mouth surfaced. I ran over to him. His face was smurf-blue but not all over, as though his part of his face had been dipped in paint.

I sat him up, and he threw up a couple of times in the water. First a little bit and then a thin-milkshake gusher.

That's when I woke up. As I sat reflecting, I could still hear the baby's noise: something was partially obstructing one of my nostrils, making a faint whistle-wheeze.

1 comment:

Bo said...

It's amazing to me how parenthood simultaneously dramatically reduces the number of items on your "Scared Of" list, while at the same time dramatically increasing the intensity of the items that remain on it.