There's a Sock on Your Hat!

The Dream: I'm visiting one of my brothers, about to leave. I need to get to Heathrow Airport for my journey home. I go to a travel kiosk that looks like an old-fashioned counter at a train station: the clerks are behind a grill. I ask for directions to Heathrow. When I approach the counter the woman is very friendly and congenial, and says to me, “Did you know there's a sock on your hat?” It's placed the way a decorative flower might have been. We both roar with laughter, and I say:”My brother could have told me!” I feel he's played a brotherly prank on me, and I have to admit it's pretty funny.

Interpretation: Not all dreams deal with heavy issues; most, in fact, reflect day to day concerns. After my recent trip to a foreign country to visit one of my husband's childhood friends, I had two dreams featuring laughter. My relative (in waking life my husband, not my brother) played a prank on me by subjecting me to his very self-involved friend for a few days. (I was “grilled” by the ordeal.) In the dream I laugh it off. This releases tension and points out that I shouldn't take the situation, or myself, too seriously.

Which Hat to Wear?

Dreams are a good place to discover all the different hats you are able to wear.

The Dream: I’m in a fancy hotel with my cousin and others. I notice a square rising above our heads but not as far as the ceiling. On the top of this structure are all sorts of hats on old-fashioned hat stands. I realize that I myself had placed two or three hats on this structure.

A woman who works for the hotel, the person responsible for keeping us customers satisfied, has come into our suite. She asks if there is anything we need. I ask for some sparkling water, or, if that’s not available, still water. She scurries off to get it, and I wonder if I’ve done the wrong thing; we will probably be charged a lot for this water. I feel uncomfortable, but I decide even if we’re seriously over-charged it will be okay.

Interpretation: My life is rich with possibilities (the fancy place where I’m staying). The square shape represents my potential (in Jung’s terms, the Self) and the hats my possible personas (the different roles I might play). That both are over my head implies I’ve not yet attained either; both are beyond me.

The woman who asks what we need is what we call a guide in dream work: someone to assist or point the way. I ask her for water (a symbol of the unconscious), indicating I would like some of the things locked in my unconscious to become conscious. That I specifically ask for sparkling water shows that I expect access to this unconscious material to be enlightening. As soon as I make my request I regret it: I fear the price will be too high. Is life more easily lived in a state of unconsciousness? Do I really want to take that bite of the apple? In the end I decide the price might be high, but it’s a price I’m willing to pay (it will be okay).

Men in Hats

Dream Image: A panel with three heads in 16^th c. hats.

Interpretation: The hats represent the different roles I play; the date (16^th c) tells me that these roles were defined for me sometime in the past, perhaps when I was 16. The green background, alluding to growth, says it’s time to grow past these old ways of being in the world: it’s time for a change, and I need to remember that change starts with a rearrangement of my fixed ideas, in other words, in the head beneath the hat.

A Regal Grandmother

The Dream: I see my grandmother, who died on Christmas eve in 1978. She is wearing a large black hat. I am surprised that her skin is very smooth, without wrinkles, even though she is clearly elderly. She speaks English perfectly, which was not the case in waking life. I go up to her, surprised and pleased to see her and say, “Do you remember me? I’m Carla.” She has the quiet authority and self-assurance of a queen. “I know who you are,” she says. 

Interpretation: Grandmother’s large black hat tips us off that this dream is about mourning. Her skin has changed—no longer is it wrinkled—suggesting the rebirth metaphor of the snake which sheds its old skin. She speaks fluent English. The dream tells me that now that I am older myself I can understand her, and see her for who she really is: someone regal in spirit, someone who rose above the humble circumstances of her life. Her statement to me “I know who you are” seems to say two things at once. On the one hand, it suggests a sort of intimacy; on the other, a distance. After all, in this world we can only get so close to a spirit—and no closer.

Guest Dreamer: Laid Off and Weeping

Today’s guest dreamer is Emily. She is an experienced dream worker and will interpret her own dream—although that isn’t a word she likes to use. “I'm never comfortable with using 'interpretation' when working with a dream,” she says, “perhaps because there never is one interpretation.” That’s a good point.
       
The Dream: I am in the instructor’s room at the county jail where I used to work as a teacher. I sit at a small round wooden table across from my tall blond co-worker Alyssa. Our boss Evans walks in and asks her if she has 2 ½  hours available. He then talks about how good Alyssa has been on the job; so good, in fact, that he is going to have to lay her off. Tension builds in the room. Alyssa stands up to walk out with Evans to go to that 2 ½  hour meeting where she’ll be terminated, and she starts to cry. I stand up to hug her, and I start crying as well. As we embrace and weep together, she inadvertently knocks off my Tilley hat.

Emily’s thoughts on her dream: As jail is a form of imprisonment, I see how I can imprison myself by being “too good” a daughter, wife, or friend. So good, in fact, my animus needs to deliver me from my self-imposed and compulsive responsibility that has recently resurfaced in waking life (I know my boss never took his job half as seriously as I took mine, so the message comes across loud and clear).

The weeping is timeless grief. As Alyssa grieves at leaving her “dream” job (which I held in waking life for many years with much satisfaction), I grieve at the passing of my old, unhealthy habit of needing to be needed. Allyssa knocks off my Tilley hat which represents outdoor activity, recreation, freedom.  By embracing Allyssa the dream ego shows compassion for the qualities that are not so great about the “good girl” persona. Perhaps she’ll soon put the hat on!

Carla’s thoughts: If this were my dream, I would ask myself about the significance of 2 ½ since my dream emphasizes that number by mentioning it twice.

The things I’m “too good” at are socially determined roles: daughter, wife, friend. The phrase “laid off” tells me that some part of me is saying, “Lay off! Gimme a break.”