Two very strange dreams

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve journaled my dreams ever since I was quite young; during high school, college, and right after college, I would have these vivid, sprawling epic dreams, often playing upon recurring dream symbols of mine: water (oceans), bridges, tornadoes, being chased, my childhood neighborhood, schools, driving. I had two rather intense dreams this morning, one that kept me in bed for easily an extra half-hour just so I could keep replaying the first half of that dream, in that amorphous semi-aware state before fully waking.

Dream 1. I dreamt I was cradling the most perfect newborn baby. He couldn’t have weighed more than 7 pounds, and fit perfectly as I held him in both of my hands. (I say “he” b/c I’m not really sure what gender he was, and it’s better than calling it an “it” from here on out.) He was swaddled in white linen, his cheeks rosy and his face switching from tightly scrunched to peacefully serene. A light layer of down covered his scalp. Everything about him was perfect: a tiny nub nose, and the most delicate, beautiful fingers that, like his face, both clenched and released these Lilliputian fists. I was entranced by his fingers, the way you might find miniatures for doll houses both adorable and astonishing in their detail and scale. He reached for my breast and I happily let him suckle there. The warmth of skin to skin, that perfect newborn baby smell: it was intoxicating. Every now and then he would dribble a bit of milk, or I’d have to adjust slightly, and the milk was this thick texture not unlike oil paint, except it was this beautiful shade of milky gold, opalescent and sparkling gold in the light. After he had finished, I laid him down in a bassinet and wrote down the time I fed him on a white board on my fridge. I remarked at the bright white-gold residue on my fingers and hands.

This is the part of the dream that gets really weird. So I go to check on the bassinet sometime later, and I smell something burning in the kitchen. The baby is no longer in the bassinet, and I run to the kitchen. In a large saucier is- I know what you’re thinking, but it’s not- a large brick of tofu, cooking in some broth. It is roughly the same size as my baby, and I recognize instantly that a) my baby has turned into tofu and b) my tofu baby is now cooking on the stove. I cut through the tofu with a spatula and it’s tofu through and through- I know there is no hope of getting the baby back now that it has completely transmogrified. I start wailing and screaming, feeling this utter sense of emptiness within my breast.

Dream 2. I’m at some cooking school, and I’ve arrived late to my class. My instructors include a woman (let’s call her H) with whom I’ve actually taken two cooking classes from in waking life, and Anthony Bourdain. They’ve already begun to shut down for the night: not just the kitchen, but the whole school. I’m scrambling to put together some kind of salmon with curry and lavender (which, salmon and curry = tasty; salmon and lavender honey = tasty; not so sure about this mix). I’m freaking out b/c they’re literally shutting the lights off around me in the kitchen, and somehow, I manage to dismantle the entire stove as I’m trying to cook. I start freaking out, asking for help, and Anthony and H are exasperated with me at this point. Anthony reminds me to calm down, shows me how to reinstall and turn the burners back on, but it’s just a mess. Somehow, in the process of putting the stove back together, I’ve crammed dirty dishes underneath the stove top and I can secure it down to cook. I’m on the verge of a total emotional breakdown when I wake up suddenly, breathing fast and feeling quite disoriented.

My thoughts on these? I’m not really sure yet. I’m still waking up for the day, so I haven’t had a chance to really analyze them. But they have certainly left a vivid impact on me: they felt so real. I should also note that this is the first baby dream I’ve had since high school. And even then, that was the only other baby dream I’ve ever remembered having. In high school I dreamt I went through a full pregnancy and labor in the course of about 48 hours, and had a beautiful little blonde-haired blue-eyed boy (which is nigh impossible what with the half-Japanese in me). Last night was the first dream in over a decade that I’d had about someone I perceived as my child, even throughout this whole ordeal of diagnosis and coping in the last year.

Strange. I’ve got a little soul-searching and pondering to do today, for as it says in the Talmud: “A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read.”