A Tricky Operation

Ancient wisdom has said that the sins of the father are visited upon the children. This dream seems to be saying that the sins of the parent are perpetuated and passed down, over and over again.
The Dream: My mother-in-law, M, is experiencing some symptoms. Her mother sits her on top of a kitchen counter and cuts out her heart and lungs. M doesn't seem to experience the sort of pain one would expect from this. M and her mother, accompanied by M's daughter carrying the organs, board an ambulance and head for the hospital. The doctors put back the removed parts and explain to M's mother, who seems sweet and well meaning throughout, that this was the wrong thing to do; nevertheless, she clings to her belief that she did the right thing. Years later M is in an old folks' home where I visit her. She recounts this story, her eyes full of pain.

Although M herself has been a very difficult person and caused her family a lot of pain, I feel a new empathy for her and, while I can't overlook the effects her own bad behavior has had on her children, I now have compassion for what she went through and wonder if it might have been responsible for triggering her own cruelty.

Interpretation: Metaphorically the heart is the place of feeling; we often say that something is heartfelt, or that something broke our hearts. The lungs enable us to cry out. We yell at “the top of our lungs.” In this dream, the sweet mother inflicts serious damage unwittingly, unknowingly, convinced that she is doing the right thing. Worse than what she has done is her refusal to acknowledge that she was wrong. She clings to her beliefs about the correctness of her behavior, even in the face of clear evidence that she made a mistake, and these deeds travel down the generations from parent to child.

M is my avatar in this dream, and I begin to understand my own lapses as grounded in a time when I could not speak (yell out) to defend myself, and so I lost heart. I ignored and suppressed my pain, creating the possibility that I would someday blindly lash out at my own defenseless child. At the same time the dream warns me not to be too convinced of my own rectitude. The bright spot in the dream is my new found compassion, and the hope that it will enable me to forgive the guilty, and, at the same time, protect the defenseless.

Can't Hit Them When They're Down

The Dream: My friend Martha has let me know, without directly saying so, that she is very angry with her husband George who suffers from a debilitating disease. It's an anger too deep for words, and she expresses it by holding a baseball bat in one hand and tapping it against the other.

I'm in the house; my mother is with me, as are others. It's a party of sorts. I have a drink, and my mother makes a “joke” about not saying anything about my reaching for a drink for fear I'd whack her with a baseball bat.

Martha and George show up. Martha is seething at George. I tell her the comment my mother made, thinking it's a hilarious joke. Martha talks about anger toward the ill and helpless, pointing out that it is very difficult to express. At this point she is so angry at George that I wonder if she will leave him, and part of me would be happy to see her free of him and all the obligation that caring for him entails.

Interpretation: At first I thought this dream was about unexpressed anger toward my husband, but when I asked myself who in my life had been ill for a very long time—and who did I resent because I couldn't express this anger and frustration—I came up with a very different answer. I couldn't leave my ill mother or mother-in-law (be free of their needs and influence) while they lived, but the dream points out that it's okay to be relieved to be free from those obligations now.

The Butterfly and the Spider

Dream image: A beautiful butterfly, wings folded close in and almost wrapped around it like a cocoon, is caught in a spider's web. I am upset and scream for Clark.

Interpretation: Clark spoke to his mother's doctor, who said she is near death. I think of my mother (now deceased) and my mother-in-law (near death) as the beautiful young women they once were and am forced to see the results of Chronos (Time) eating his children. It's hard to accept the selfishness of the Life Force and the ultimate tragedy of we who are enlisted to serve it. It's something like a beautiful butterfly caught in a spider's web.