Normal Dreams

I was normal until I started therapy. Or at least, I thought I was normal; I perceived myself as normal and in the end, really, isn't our perception of reality the only reality we actually know?

When I dream--night dreams, not ambition-type dreams--the drama almost always unfolds within the house in which I grew up, the house into which we moved just after I turned 4 and that my mother sold when I was 25. The rules of time and space fall apart in dreams-- my teenaged brothers, my mother in her late 30s, my vicious junior-high classmates, baby Owen, toddler Hugh, the current Keith, now-dead colleagues, and friends from England and Poland all move in and out, but they do so, usually, in my childhood bedroom or the den with the shag carpet and faux leather sofa or the rarely used "front room" with its white couch and breakable knick-knacks or the massive front yard with its gravel driveway descending down a hill made treacherous by Chicago winters.

It always made sense to me that my dreamscapes were those of my childhood--obviously, it would have been different had I been an army brat, say, or a corporate kid who moved every year or so, but I wasn't, and given that "home" still tends to call up this very specific half-wood, half-brick, five-bedroomed, 3 1/2 baths suburban split-level, well, why shouldn't it be the setting of my subconscious? That just seemed, yes, normal. Until I happened to mention to my therapist (my former therapist, I should say, one in a long line of therapists, counsellors, psychologists, social workers, pastors, nuns, and caring professionals, all of whom meant well, a few of whom actually did well) that my dreams almost always occur within the confines of the house in which I grew up.

Gosh. Bingo. Paydirt. The treasure map unearthed. You'd have thought I confessed I fantasized about murdering my mother and having sex with my dad. No, you'd have thought I confessed I actually did kill off mom and fuck my father. The therapist could barely remain seated. Perched on the edge of her chair, positively vibrating excitement, she informed me in her thick German accent (yes, she really did have a German accent) that no, no, most people (normal people, that is) did not dream regularly about their childhood home and that the fact that I did so clearly indicated the presence of "unresolved conflicts about my upbringing."

Well, of course I have unresolved conflicts about my upbringing. Who doesn't? Surely it's, umm, yes, not normal to have no unresolved childhood conflicts? Geez. Had this woman never read Philip Larkin?

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you up with the faults they had
And add some extra just for you.

But they were fucked-up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats. . .

So I reject the whole childhood house dream=unresolved family conflict thesis. Given the fuckeduppedness of family life in general, if the thesis were true, we'd all be dreaming constantly of our family home. And evidently we all don't. Evidently only not-normal me.

Actually, tho', that house has featured far less in my dreams of late. Ever since this past May, when Hugh and I visited the house with my mother. We were just driving by the old neighborhood, me and mom pointing out the skating lake and the Heckman's old house and the corner where all the accidents occurred. But then there was our house on the hill. "Looks empty, doesn't it?" says Mom. "There's a For Sale sign," Hugh points out. So of course we park and begin to snoop around the yard and peer into the windows--activities that bring out the somewhat alarmed occupant and her toddler daughter. Yet we're able to convince her our intentions are honorable and soon we're having a tour of the entire house. There are the inevitable changes: All the carpet has been ripped out. My bedroom has disappeared, swallowed up in an expansion of the master suite. My parents' bathroom now features a black toilet and sink. A much-used tv area has replaced the pristine and uncomfortable front room. There are surprising continuities: The back yard remains enormous. the kids' bathroom is untouched--same tile, same sinks, same tub and toilet. But overall is a sense of shabbiness, of a house worn down and worn out. The wood is cracking, the bricks could use some nipping and tucking, water-stains mark the ceilings, pits and pock marks dot the cement porch.

Maybe the house will fill up my dreams again. Or maybe that visit shattered some residual tie. Goodness, maybe it even resolved some childhood conflict. Dunno. But when we drove away and I turned around for a last look, I felt triumphant. We're about the same age, that house and me, but damn, I've worn much better.