Dream - My grandmother's birthday party, and old cars disappearing into fog

Saturday morning, November 15, 2008, I had a dream in which I was at my grandmother's house in Arizona, but it was much bigger, and she was having a birthday party. It's hard to say for sure what time period the party would be in, except that it was probably somewhere in the 1970s or early '80s. The family members there generally seemed younger than they are now, though maybe not always by the full amount that would be required.

There were a lot of plants at the far wall and on the walls that joined to it. Some of the plants were very small and some average-to-large in size. Some of the pots were the size of little Styrofoam cups and others were large. All were overflowing or filled near the brim with water. My youngest sister was watering them and just went along them with the pitcher, pouring it out, getting some on the floor.

My grandmother, a little later, was given two books. She was sitting in a chair just on the other side of a wide doorway that led into the kitchen area. They were medical books of some kind. One was much smaller and thinner than the other. She was looking through the larger one, which was a tall, thick, oversized paperback that evidently dealt with herbal remedies. The other book was on the floor near her. She had evidently already looked through it some. She seemed fascinated by the one she was reading and asked me which one I bought for her or something like that. I had been out of town working and didn't actually buy them. I leaned over forward to be down near her. Though I faced her, my eyes went to the right and I was saying, "Uhhhhhhh........" My mother came up and rescued me, saying it was time to eat or something like that.

My brother brought in something like a pale cake that was partly composed of pudding, almost like a soft bread pudding except that it was uniform inside and didn't have any visible seams or components. Whatever it was I thought of it as cake. My grandmother seemed to have somehow moved a few feet into the family room, still in her chair. Both books were now on the floor. My brother had a big spatula and was using it to cut a long thin rectangular piece of the cake, which was in a rectangular glass pan. I worried about the cake dripping as it was a little wet, especially on the bottom. He was talking in a slightly loud sarcastic voice with an edge in it, and was getting the piece of cake out for my grandmother while holding it over one of the books. I went over to the book and moved it aside, whereupon he immediately turned and held it over the other book, which I also then moved. I complained to him about what he was doing, holding it over one of the books and then when I moved it holding it over the other one. He continued to talk in the sarcastic voice, ignoring me, though I think his eyes turned from side to side a little.

We went into the kitchen area to eat, to kind of a second smaller family room that corresponded more with how the house was in real life. My aunt, my mother's sister, came down to serve part of the food. I think someone had to go and coax her. She had wild hair that stuck out all over in long thick tapering curly light brown tufts. I think she had a big bowl in front of her that she was scooping portions out of for people, some kind of vegetable I think. There was also a second cake as well as other things. She talked while she worked, I think about something fairly matter of fact, but the way her head and mouth and eyes moved it was evident that she was a little upset about something and tears were in her eyes.


Some time passed then, and I came back what seemed like a couple of days later, though it may have been a week, to care for the plants. The house was dark. Everyone seemed to be gone, though I wondered if someone, maybe my aunt, was in the back to the house, in one of the bedrooms. I looked out the window at the back, standing a few feet away from the window I think, not really looking closely at things, just wanting to look some out there for a while.

I went over to the kitchen table and sat there, reading a technical book. The book was at least partly about cars, but it also seemed to be about science, maybe even physics or astronomy, and was in small print. I was maybe two-thirds through. I decided to skip through it some and see what it looked like further on. I was looking at some pages near the back, and then leafed through to the back and found that the back of the book had some of the pages damaged. Some were torn off vertically, some near the seam and some both near the seam and near the edge, with most of the middle missing.

I had the pages that had simply been torn off near the edge. They were still in the book and could be taped back together. The ones with the missing middle still had the outer edge, a strip of the page with a black plastic strip running down the outer edge. The plastic was perhaps 3/8 of an inch wide, with a slight ridge running down it near the inner edge. I didn't know why the book was made with plastic strips on the edges of the last few pages. It seemed awkward and they would be in the way. There wasn't much I could do with the pages with the missing middle. I decided to tape them to the back cover for now, in the hope that someday someone might find the missing middle sections and then be able to properly repair it.

I was afraid I was a little too late in coming back to care for the plants, that they had suffered from lack of water, and I felt a little guilty because of it. At the far end of the family room was a black upright piano, with plants across the closed keyboard cover and on both sides of the piano. Water was dripping on the black wooden keyboard cover, from a hose or perhaps even some kind of thin copper pipe with a small shutoff valve. Because of the plants it was hard to see exactly what the water was coming from, particularly from the other side of the room.

At some point a psychiatrist showed up. He felt something like the one I once had, though he seemed a little older and didn't really look like him. I don't recall him coming in. It seemed like he was just suddenly there and the assumption was that he had come into the house and sat down, in the kitchen in a chair near the door to the carport. I was on the other side of the table from him, still fiddling with the plastic strips, trying to get them secured to the back cover. I finally gave up on it for now and just closed the book. The pressure of it being closed would have to be enough hold the strips inside. The psychiatrist sat there frowning and we talked back and forth. I talked to him about the house being dark and how I was supposed to care for the plants, and about the general situation.


Then the situation changed, and I went back to Nevada and to the place in the desert where I worked. I talked with some people for a while, at various places in Building A, going probably from the north end toward the south end, and probably spending the larger part of my time in the south half of the building. At some point someone came and kept telling me, maybe more than one person telling me, that I needed to go to the conference room, that there was something important there. It seemed to have the force of an order, that it was an order from a manager that was being relayed to me. I think it was a general thing, that other people were also supposed to come, and that it was something that had been planned. I didn't feel a great sense of urgency about it, perhaps because I no longer really worked there. I finally went to see what was happening, though.

Going with a few other people, maybe including some who had made the request, I went down the long hallway, going north, away from the south entrance to the conference room, heading for the north one. When we got to the northern entrance, the doors were either already opened or were opened as we arrived. A few people were there, evidently waiting for us, perhaps especially for me, though I think they were also talking to each other when we came up. They were managers, I think, and directed our attention to inside the conference room.

There were a few cars in the conference room, on the side near the hallway, and one or two even outside the room. Some were owned by relatives, I think, but some weren't. They were small cars mainly, though some may have been midsize.

Just beyond the cars, running the length of the conference room, was an impenetrable fog. The cars were already dimmed by it and some were moving sideways into it, fading into the fog and disappearing. The cars were too old now, they had been cared about and cared for, but now they were too old and needed too much work, it was too expensive to keep them. It was sad but it was time now to move them on, maybe to car clubs or collectors or something like that, and people needed to realize that and should accept it, but I didn't know if all of them would.