Dream journal: Jane making desserts

Dreams of family: Jane was making desserts, using crushed cookies to make macaroons with egg whites, ruffled cooked potatoes with chocolate sauce. How odd. I tasted the potatoes, not very sweet. Jane said the recipe had too much sugar. I was worried that the cookies weren't good or had the dreaded hazelnuts in them (I'm allergic). She answered me that they were just almonds. She was mixing these concoctions by the laundry/utility room off the kitchen in Forest Knolls. It wasn't trashy. 

I got chocolate sauce all over my arms and my hands and my left foot. I washed my limbs in the kitchen sink. Someone was concerned that I was so showing so much thigh. So was I. She was probably grossed out by seeing my foot in the kitchen sink. It was either that, or track chocolate all through the house. 

The dining room extended to a long covered patio. It was resortlike, and it reminded me of the remodeled Rancho Nicasio. Other family members were nearby, even Grandma who no longer says anything much in my dreams anymore. Just puts in an appearance or two. Always busy with something she is. Just the sight of her always brings me comfort. I saw my aunt Toddy too, out of the corner of my eye. 

In the living room was a box of Christmas lights and small green bits of plastic like a jigsaw puzzle with no picture. I had to carry it somewhere. On my return trip, the entrance to the house moved to the south side of the dining room, and turned into a tall trellis ladder, that I had to climb. 

I was a wondering whatever happened to the Peery sisters, Sue and Jan. And on my way I passed them, they were much older, the only recognizable thing was their voices. They were well coiffured, looking very middle-class with their diamond rings. And they didn't recognize me even though I walked right beside Jan for some time. So much for old friends.

I was still carrying that box and I was miserably underdressed in rags. The trellis stairway presented a problem and I tried to tie up the box and drag it up the path but I needed to carry it. I was able to get it to the top of the trellis, and someone reach down for the box but it fell, the sides all worn, gave away. I returned it, hugged it to my chest, but then, I couldn't navigate the trellis. It was very frustrating. All those green jigsaw pieces tumbling out all over the place. 

Finally it dawned on me that there was nothing of value in the box that I was lugging around. I jettisoned it, but only after a valiant attempt to return it. 

Another scene we're returning from somewhere and someone hands me a news photo of firetrucks at the capital. My brother Guy is in one of the trucks and he's returned home. It'll be so good to see him. There's been some kind of catastrophe or emergency. He's been drafted into the fire department. He comes over looking at up about 22, he has hair, and we're thrilled to see him. It's been a long time. 

I'm standing in my strange get up, barelegged. It seems I don't get to wear any appropriate clothing in this particular dream. Maybe it was a nighty of sorts. 

My brother makes a comment about my dress and I bust his chops and said what's more important, me, or how I look? I

t seems that the party was for Guy and we all coalesced in Forest Knolls. Was that really Guy's red '57 Chevy in the driveway? 

Elements: the shoe box with Christmas garbage in it. I took from Forest Knolls into the world where the junk decreased in value. And then I got tired of carrying it and I tied it up and dragged it in the dirt. What was I supposed to do with it? By the time I got done with it, the colored Christmas lights were no more just junk. I never figured out what all those green pieces were for, they were like Legos spilling out of the box wherever I went. 

There are thousands of them even in the dream I was puzzled by them. Puzzled by pieces of the puzzle? A puzzle without a picture? Holiday garbage I picked off the living room couch that I saw some value in it until I started having to carry it around. But I didn't willingly let it go, I took it with me and I risked a fall off the trellis. If the helpful young man hadn't dropped it, I could've returned it hold back to where it belongs. It wasn't my garbage. Instead it spilled by the side of the path for everyone to see. And when I left with it, it had the semblance of value and when I returned it it was truly garbage. With bits of hay sticking to it. 

My dress fits into the same metaphor. all the rooms are public. No privacy anywhere—even for my brothers homecoming. I remember thinking it odd that Jane seem so young, she had a very slender waist, no gut and then she said something puzzling, well it's time for my abortion, and wiped her hands and left. She was joking of course, muttering that it was better than getting cancer. A Pap smear a D&C? I remember being scandalized, for she was the unmarried virgin aunt. 

Box equals room? I'm carrying around a useless box, the puzzle, DNA cells and building blocks. I've lost many of them trying to return home I've dragged it into the grass and dirt I've hoisted it up on the trellis wire trellis only to let a young man drop it. How old am I in the dream? Both Guy and Jane are in their 30s at the same time, and decades younger. Everything is all-time twisted.

1/2017, ironically Jane did get breast cancer, that spread into uterine cancer, she was scheduled for a hysterectomy when she died.

And when we began to clean out the basement in Forest Knolls, the box of Christmas lights and plastic ornaments that Toddy gave us, did indeed spill all over and haunt me. The packrats had taken a shine to the ornaments and incorporated them into the shingle nest in the basement. We threw it all into the dumpster.