May 31, 2008
Dream Journal: “Daddy Shows Us the House Where He Grew Up”
I am riding with Daddy and two of my sisters, Toren and Keesha, in the dry desert backcountry of Idaho. He drives on a dirt road deep into country and finally parks in a gravel pit.
“Where are we, Daddy?”
“I want to show the house where I grew up.”
The immediate area rose and fell in a rough series of dark sand hills or windrows—not like dunes but more like tailings from a mine. The tailings scattered back under pine trees where I could see old homesteads and shacks and people here and there.
A small stream of clear water ran through the trees and over the black sand gullies at our feet. Daddy and others bent to drink, but I was leery of drinking from any open running water that ran out of human habitation and mine tailings.
Daddy led us into the area, and we three girls explored happily. I could tell he was looking for something hidden in the depths of his childhood memory.
A line of three identical box houses appeared—company housing—and fell apart in a rapid time lapse.
As we clambered about, we came upon a rambling, old, wooden boarding house and entered, out footsteps echoing. People came and went dressed in country clothes.
An old woman came to greet us, and she seemed to know Daddy, but he didn’t know her.
“Are these your girls?” she asked kindly.
“Yes,” he said.
I jumped in and said, “I’m Sandy, this is Keesha, and Toren, and we have another sister and a brother at home.”
“Oh my,” she said, smiling at Daddy, “Such a lot of girls!”
But he was thinking, “Is this the place?
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My Notes: I felt the old woman in the dream was a pioneer ancestor—Daddy’s great grandmother, as he didn’t recognize her, and this must have been the 1870’s or 80’s, and while I thought it was Idaho, I think it may have been on Grandma Petersen/Price’s side of the family in Longmont, Colorado.
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How does this relate to this picture?
I began by drawing a deep spring with roots deep in the earth and a long flight of stairs underground that the women had to climb down to fill their pots with water. Then I drew the pot, and then the woman appeared holding the pot, looking out across the landscape. In the landscape she saw the animals.
I thought she was also a deep ancestral figure, prefiguring the dream ancestor by perhaps millennia.
Sandy,
The animated world is fascinating to me because I recently visited Parma, Idaho, our father’s birth town. We were headed for Succor Creek, as you know. It is hard to get to Parma. It didn’t seem to be on a major highway. We spent enough time there for me to deeply ponder that my father passed through here at least briefly. A poor town and I too searched for resonance or a tiny thread of remembrance. I feel like you may have had this dream for me. Your picture could well relate to this area. How do the frog like figures relate? Cheryl