Leave my dream alone~

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Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake? ~Leonardo da Vinci

During lunch with friends, one offered me her bag of potato chips—she knows I’m addicted. I must have been in one of my rare and transitory healthy phases, because I said no.

“Then take them for Bruce,” she urged.

“No, he doesn’t eat them any more...” Then, because of the looks on their faces, I added “Oh, he stopped eating them before...” meaning before his cancer diagnosis.

They knew what I didn’t say; one told me she was sorry to hear; the other asked a couple questions... and all this prompted me to go into my “We’re fine, he’s fine, I’m fine” mode.

But I decided to share my owl dream, and how it had revealed to me that I was angry and feeling out of control--even though I’m fine, for all practical purposes!

I started in about seeing the owl, wanting to take photos, not having my camera...but Lin interrupted me with a question: “What kind of owl?”

Now I like details, too, and tend to interrupt to get them sometimes, so I told her: the head was a barn owl and the body was a snowy owl.

I resumed my dream-telling, but noticed that she looked sort of alarmed: she pinched her mouth shut as if she were holding back a river of piranhas, and her brow went all squiggly.

I got the feeling that dreaming about owls when one’s husband had just been diagnosed with cancer was... maybe not such a good thing.

As I continued the dream, Lin still looked tense. I touched her arm and said, “What? Is that bad? Dreaming about an owl?”

She sighed and shrugged and opened her mouth.

“Don’t TELL me! DON’T answer that.” I sounded a little deranged, but I subscribe to the head in the sand approach—what I don’t know can’t scare me.

She kept quiet for a while as I continued the dream—my frustration at not having my camera, the futile attempts to get a shot with my iPhone.

“DID you get a picture?“ she asked.

“I couldn’t,” I said. “Everybody got in my way and the sun was too bright.”

“Oh, well that’s good, then, GOOD that you couldn’t get a picture of the owl,” Lin said,” relaxing a little.

I felt both relieved and, well, to be honest, a little angry.

Really? I thought it was a dream, not a prophecy! It was my subconscious telling me that, while I thought I was okay, I’m frustrated, sad, and angry. I needed to realize that, and it took an owl to waken me to that truth. I LIKE owls. I once collected owl figurines.

Later, I looked up “owls in dreams” and saw why she was concerned. But I choose to think the owl was a conveyor of wisdom, rather than a harbinger of death, because I think the best interpretation of a dream comes from the dreamer.

And I haven't dreamed about owls since. 

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The dream post

For more stories on my  blog, click the title "Upstream and Down" and scroll down to see more of the cancer journey...