What's Cooking?

The Dream: I'm at the stove. It's a gas stove with openings where some of the burners go. A toddler, a young boy, has stuck his head through one of these openings. His father, a Middle Eastern man, dark and hefty, is trying to pull him out. I take a softer approach, cajoling him, and he agrees to come out. Then I carry him around with me everywhere, feeling very maternal.

Interpretation: I'm in the kitchen, where raw ingredients are turned into food, symbolically a place of transformation. There could be something a little dangerous about the transformation about to take place, however: I might get burned. Something interesting that I'm strongly attached to (as a mother would be) is popping out, breaking through, in a surprising way. The powerful father, my inner forceful hefty man, seems foreign (Middle Eastern) to me. I don't think he will be the one to facilitate this new thing that is emerging, yet he, as the father, is clearly a part of it. It won't be forced, but will come out when it's ready, and then it will be an important part of my life (I'll carry it everywhere). The dream tells me to let things run their course.

What have I Locked Away?

The Dream: I’m in a house which is empty of furnishings, as if we’re just moving in. A man is helping, a swarthy Middle Eastern type. I can’t tell if he is a nice guy—which he appears to be—or a terrorist who has infiltrated. He shows a card with a string of numbers at the top. The only numbers I remember are the 0 and the 20, at the beginning. I think this is some sort of a code: either for a locker or something else. Is this a code he will slip to a compatriot, some sort of secret message? Or is it the number for a locker combination? Will they put bombs in the locker?

Interpretation: I’ve come to a new stage of life (moving into a new house). Here I meet a part of myself that is foreign to me (Middle Eastern). In fact, this part of me is so unfamiliar I don’t even know if he’s good or bad. He is connected to an experience I had at age 20 (the numbers on the card). That experience is a code for something that created a psychic explosion.

At the age of 20 I had just graduated university and left home to live in Manhattan (the new house). Being my own person and seeing such a different life from the one I had experienced growing up in the South expanded my mind to the point it could be thought of as a type of explosion. What might the experience be a code for? Freedom! The dream is reminding me that it’s important to hang on to the essential part of myself that I discovered in my early adulthood.