Dreams: Octopus Baby and Adopting Basketball Players

Since the age of seven I’ve suffered from bad dreams. Not always the scary “knife-wielding-man, chase-you-down-slasher” dreams, just bad, weird, unsettling types. I’ve had the more typical ones – drowning: check, falling off a bridge/cliff: check, reuniting with dead people: check checkity check.

I think the bad/weird dreams started largely in part due to (or around the same time of) the death of my great-grandmother who was living with us at the time.  For the first seven years of my life, she was my constant –she did the bulk of the day-to-day raising of me.  It was vaguely traumatic to process at age seven.  For my birthday that year, my parents had planned a family party at home, followed by an awesome night for me: an A’s game at the Oakland Coliseum –one of our favorite times to go because of the fireworks (for the Memorial Weekend Holiday), even though I hid under the seat terrified the sparks would fall and burn me.

Gram and I -May/87 during my birthday party, less than 24 hours before she passed away.

Upon returning, Gram was sleeping and had left a note not to disturb her if she was asleep. The next morning I awoke to my sister screaming and screaming. From that point, I was locked in my room until the situation was dealt with. Apparently, Gram’s alarm clock went off and after not being turned off my sis went to check on her, realizing she had passed away somewhere in the middle of the night.  The last thing I remember was her being wheeled from the house on a gurney. And then seeing her looking so empty during her funeral service.  My dad forcing me to lay my hand upon her in the casket to say good-bye. Shockingly cold and unreal.

Shortly after that, the bizarre dreams would begin –seeing Gram driving her blue Caprice through the streets of San Lorenzo as I waved vigorously for her to stop and pick me up (she used to pick me up daily from school), only to jump into her car and see her skin begin to slowly spot and darken (like age spots), then dematerializing right before me, leaving me alone in the back of the car. Other times I would dream I was being restrained by people as I tried mightily to run and hug her, with them yelling at me “You can’t! You can’t! That’s not her, it’s just her soul, you can’t hug her.”

Pretty heavy shit for a seven-year old, right? Over time, the dreams would lessen in frequency, but not their bizarre quality.  Morphing into whatever was relevant at that time of my life.

Lately, however, the dreams have been just whacked out on a new level.  Naturally, I’m chalking it up to pregnancy -not only have I read that pregnancy unleashes a multitude of oddball dreams, but I think the lack of sleep I am getting makes them ever more intense.

This week, I dreamed that I gave birth to our baby.  Not unusual. That typically happens throughout pregnancy. The weird thing was that I wasn’t even aware I had given birth.  One minute I was talking to the midwife while laboring,  the next I looked down and there was baby.  A HUGE baby.

Still connected to me via placenta and cord I picked it up and walked all the way across the room and began to give the baby a bath in the baby sink-tub.  The midwife comes over and she’s really disappointed that I delivered the baby on my own.  So we discuss ways that could have been avoided (ha, as if I’m doin’ this for a fifth time!). I’m disappointed that I didn’t realize the baby came out, as if I missed the event altogether.

Then we notice the baby is a girl, not a boy (yeah, yeah, yeah I know, I have all boys. I’m fine with having a fourth boy)… only after its belly button it doesn’t have legs and genitals, it looks like an octopus.

What the?!

The midwife assures me this is totally normal and that the octopus-like appendages fall off into normal legs and genitals. I am stupefied, obviously. On top of this, the baby, while wildly enormous for an infant– doesn’t even remotely look like any of my other children.  The last thing I remember about the baby was wrapping it up and nursing it.

In other unrelated weird dream news…

This Monday morning I awoke to fragments of a dream where we adopted a basketball player for the off-season.  Like some weird kind of “foreign exchange” student program.  It was our duty to house, feed and show the basketball player around.  The kids were stoked, and were sad when the baller had to leave for the season. Whole other realm of bizarre.  I guess that’s what happens when I read posts on ESPN before bed.