Regret

The Dream: I am in someone's house; it's either a rental or a home exchange. We are thinking about staying there for a while. There is a small washer and dryer in the garage. I point it out to Clark; it reminds me of the set my mother got me when I lived in an apartment. I start thinking about how good she was to me, and feel that I didn't do enough for her as she aged and became infirm. I am filled with regret, and my eyes fill with tears.

I hear another washer/dryer going, and I realize there's a much larger set in the kitchen. We go there, and I am struck by how wide the counters are. They are marble, in golden ocher tones. The lady showing us the house seems to empathize with my sadness.

Interpretation: At first I thought this was a straightforward dream about my feeling bad that I was not a good daughter, that I hadn't given back enough to my mother who was so good and so giving.

And I'm sure there's some truth to that. But there is another truth as well. I had the dream shortly after I had seen a manipulative mother in action. Of course the dream might be pointing out the contrast between my mother and this other mother—but at the same time it caused me to notice some parallels; for example, both mothers had a core of helplessness that required others to step up and take care of them. My resistance to helping my mother might have come from my fear that her need could never be satisfied, but could only suck me into an abyss from which I could not escape. I'm sure my mother had no conscious wish to limit me—quite the contrary—but there was a subtext that I found suffocating. That doesn't excuse me for not getting over it, but it does explain the resigned tone of many of us, when, even as adults, we say, “Yes, mother . . . . “

Guest Dreamer: Purification

Do you need a washing machine to take you through the complete cycle from contamination to purification? The homey images in this guest dream reveal a powerful transformation in progress.

The Dream: I am in my house, upstairs. There are guests in the house. I walk into the guest bathroom and decide to flush the toilet. When I do, watery shit bubbles out of the drain and rises to the top. It starts to overflow. I panic. The flowing stops before flooding the bathroom, but I run out of there to find a plunger so I can correct the problem. I look for the plunger downstairs in the laundry room.  A woman, my house guest, is sprawled sideways on top of the washing machine. She is clothed--at least I see she is wearing slacks, shoes and socks. The lid of the washer is up and her rear end is inside the barrel. She looks like she is just hanging out there, relaxed, with her arm over the lid.  

Carla’s interpretation: In my version of the guest dreamer’s dream, my mind (upstairs symbolizes the head) is engaged with some issues that feel alien to me (they are guests in my house rather than residents). There’s a lot of difficulty (shit) associated with these issues; repressing them has been draining me but now they are coming up with such force that they’ve risen to the top of my consciousness. In fact, they are so powerful they overflow and I panic. I run to find the device (the plunger) that can correct the problem. My unconscious is hinting here that the solution will be plunging into the difficulty rather than trying to avoid it. And, in fact, once I get to the place where I expect to find the plunger, I am in a place of purification, the laundry room. The lid is off, and I see that the problem is being addressed at its source: the rear end of my troublesome “guest.” We can guess that she is the one responsible for the excess shit in the guest bathroom. Having expelled the mess that was inside her, she is now relaxed while the washing machine completes the purge.

No Compensation

An elderly relative, Aunt Peggy, has dementia and must go to a nursing home.  Making the arrangements and clearing out her house was left to my husband Clark and me. I had this dream in the middle of that difficult chore.

The Dream: Aunt Peggy’s house is almost empty, but not quite. There are a few pieces of paper lying about and one piece of furniture, a bed. As I stand near it, a cat rubs against my legs. I wonder how it got in, and if it is making the room smelly. I want Aunt Peggy’s washer and dryer, both so new they are still in their boxes. I think that having these will make up for all the disruption she has caused.

Aunt Peggy appears. She has been pronounced cured and let out of the care facility. She has decided to hook up her new washer and dryer. She and some installers unbox the pieces and work on hooking up the water. I wonder what she must think about her house having been cleared out. She seems rational and capable.