Tell Me About Your Mother...

My mom showed up in a dream the other night. Unlike most of her appearances she wasn't in a particularly good mood, and certainly didn't have her usual kind appearance. But then I knew it was a dream and that means it wasn't she, but what she represents.

My dreams lately have had a few twists. Some new motifs have emerged and they give credence to the theory that as we age, our dream content changes. Still the teacher dreams continue. But now, I have not retired. I only indicated I did, and in the dreams I will teach this year and then retire. What's the message? That we never stop teaching?

I'm always removed in these re-teaching dreams. I'm always at another school with some classes I like and then one that I never seem to give adequate attention to. When I finally find where that class meets (I frequently forget in the dreams) I'm relieved to find that I'm such a professional that I can flawlessly launch into something meaningful-a seamless continuity.

And then there is the matter of trying to get back to some place. A rather frequent motif these days. I'm either at a hotel, or trying to get to a college campus, or sometimes living back in Texas and trying to find my old neighborhood. Whenever I begin to return to wherever it is I need to go, I seem to get farther away; it's like trying to exit a maze but then realizing that there is a maze within the maze.

Since I removed myself from the daily grind, waking at 5:45 am and crashing somewhere between 10 and 11:00 pm, I seem to be having more dreams. Although I awake most days between 7 and 8 am with an occasional earlier or later day, it makes me wonder how having more dream time affects my mental health. Surely it must be a good thing to have more REM sleep.

Since I seem to be lucid in many of these recurrent motifs, I'm going to conjure up another meeting with my mom. I'll see if I can arrange for her to meet me in one of the places I can't seem to return to. If I can pull this off, I'm sure we'll both be in better spirits. You can take the preceding line any way you want to.

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