Monday, April 16, 2007

This is a Job for Nyquil

I've been thinking about the weird dream I had this morning for most of the day. Ya'll know I hate snakes more than just about anything in the world and I can't even fathom repeatedly picking one up as I did in the dream. I get in the same room with one and I start sweating and breaking out in hives. In the dream, I didn't want to handle it, but "something" kept telling me I had to. In a way, I suppose, I was being forced to face my worst fears, which I did.

When I went grocery shopping yesterday, as I passed the road to Mamaw's house, I thought about her and the house she lived in when I was little. The porch was concrete, but painted a dark green color and it was always cool to the touch regardless of how hot it may have been outside. I haven't been back there in about thirty years, but I can still remember the cracks in the sidewalk leading up to the steps, the yucca plants on the edge of the yard and the branch that ran down the middle of the property.

It wasn't until I left the store and headed home, past the road to the cemetery where Mamaw is buried beside Papaw, that I lost it. I remembered her funeral, how my aunt was so shocked to see me walk in and the fear I had of facing my father after all those years. I had thought, before she died, that I'd never be able to do it, that I'd never be strong enough to face him.

But I did. I faced him.

And now I wonder if those thoughts as I drove home from the grocery store yesterday had anything to do with handling the snake in my dream. Maybe on some level, the powers of the universe were trying to show me that I'm capable of doing a lot more than I give myself credit for.

And maybe it was just a dream....

On a slightly different, way weirder note.. I relayed the details of my snake dream this morning to Lulu and she said, "That's odd that you dreamed about snakes last night. Last night I dreamed a huge, yellow snake was waiting for me, it's mouth gaping so wide it could have swallowed my head."

We had both had dreams of big yellow snakes. That was weird enough, but then I came home for lunch. I went in Ma's room to find Sammy to give him his pill and Ma said this to me, "I must have had your dreams last night."

I know I must have looked dumbstruck. "Every time I closed my eyes I dreamed snakes were all over me. It's the strangest thing, I used to have dreams like that all the time, but this is the first time I've dreamed about snakes since we moved here."

Isn't that just.. WEIRD??????

I tried to figure out what it could mean, but all I could come up with on Google was some weird Greek cult that had temples in places with hot mineral baths and big yellow snakes as the symbol for the god they worshiped. If ya'll can come up with anything else, I'd love to hear it.

Now I'm going to go try to find something to get the slithery things out of my head before bedtime.

Ya'll be blessed :)

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Snake handling in fundamentalism is a sign of faith; to handle something that is symbolically treated as evil, and something you know can harm you, is seen as releasing yourself to the whims of a higher power.

However, snakes and the color yellow are both notorious for showing up in dreams that deal with the use of our own intellectual faculties to work out our own problems. You didn't want to handle the snakes in your dream. This could be because of your fear of them, but it could also be the result of a fear or unwillingness to deal with something important, preferring to "let god sort it out."

That's where the dream leads me, anyways. Of course, anyone you ask about it is going to taint it with their own conscious and subconscious issues, so I reckon it's best to take it all with a grain of salt. :)

-- the gritlet

Anonymous said...

Thinkin on it some more, the dream coulda been a portent to what you were going through today. I know most of my make-no-sense dreams end up being a backwards signal to something coming in a few days time. Of course I could just be using fallacy to attribute things that happen to me as having a correlating reason inside my head.

Anyway, I also wanted to say I admire the fact that you were able to go to your Mamaw's funeral, even though it put you in a great amount of emotional pain (moreso than normal funeral attendance, that is) to do so. I often wonder what's gonna happen when I have to see my mother again. Maybe I'll cross that bridge before things get too serious.

-- Megan

Anonymous said...

how strange...I had a conversation with a friend today about rat terriers...about how they were so good at finding snakes!! and barking like crazy to alert ppl that snakes are around. is it because it's spring??

teri
prayers to the families of the students that were killed today in Virginia

kenju said...

I don't think it was JUST a dream! I has meaning, but meaning only you can interpret.

Mahala said...

Gritlet!! I think that just about covers it :) It's so good to hear from you.

teri- I don't think it's just because of spring.. I just know I didn't like it.

Kenju - time will tell eh? :)

Loner said...

Definitely weird - but pay attention - the universe is trying to tell you something!

Bert said...

No time to read that entry. Far too long. Just to say the chicken stays. Dolly said she liked it.

Mahala said...

loner - I agree!!

bert - Dolly's taste is questionable anyway, God love her. The chicken is annoying. He'd be good with dumplins.