The whole overtone of this dream was very sad, with lots of sense of loss. I was in Grandma Lawson’s house in Stillwater, with (initially) Mom and Dad and (later) Uncle Richard and Aunt Gloria. Or maybe they were all there initially and I just didn’t talk to all of them at once. Grandma’s house had become classic Craftsman in architecture (it really did have a few of those elements), though it remained very small (one BR, four or five rooms—a small table was in one end of the kitchen). The ceiling was gone, with the building open to the roof beams, and someone had tacked some sort of dark-colored gauzy fabric over the rafters so it billowed down between them. I made some comment about what an architectural gem the place was and what idjit had put the cloth up there, and we all pulled the cloth down. Interestingly, no dust was on the cloth. I do like the housekeeping aspect of dreams. 🙂
Someone told me that the house was due for demolition, that some development company had bought the land and was going to build on both it and Grandma’s big (probably half an acre) garden out back. I was incensed; destroying this architectural treasure would be an affront to history.
I went out back and got even more upset; the garden area had been dug up, foundation forms were all over the place, it was muddy and messy (with that indelible red Oklahoma mud), and 2x4s were scattered all over the place. I walked out that way, towards the northwest, and soon ran into mud and water—the lake had expanded so that the edge of Grandma’s property was marshy. (And somebody was building on that?) I got all teary-eyed, thinking that Grandma’s house was going to be gone, and the lake would probably swallow it if it kept rising. (Grandma’s did flood once, when I was about six. Rescuers took her and Grandpa out in a rowboat.)
Interestingly, this seemed to be Lake Carl Blackwell, which is outside of town, rather than the closer in-town and smaller Boomer Lake, which is IIRC (or was) the town’s water supply.
Going back inside, I realized I needed to find a bathroom. Grandma’s was evidently not functional or not there. Aunt Gloria said, “There’s one over here,” and took me out a door that hadn’t been there previously, right through the dining area (which overlooked the garden).
This turned out to be a huge, sprawling, ultramodern, ghastly addition with soaring beams and “architectural details” that were appalling, particularly in contrast to the simple elegance of the Craftsman lines. Hard to describe; huge curved walls, stairs in pointless places going to platforms; one enormous, double-gym-sized room with all this architectural junk thrown in, like a scrap heap of failed building projects that someone had foolishly decided to save. And painted in garish colors that just accented the ugliness.
We traveled around a large curved platform to the back, which had to have been farther away than the back of Grandma’s garden, and ran into a hallway that headed back toward Grandma’s house. I asked Gloria where this had come from and she said the new owners had added on to the house. It’s horrible, I said. It is, she agreed. Then she pointed to a bathroom door.
Going inside, I discovered a room the size of a gym, with more stupid architectural elements. A huge, curving platform atop which sat the toilet. To the left, maybe 3o feet away, was a bathtub—with someone in it. “Oh, excuse me!” I said, and rushed back into the hallway.
I waited and waited and waited (Gloria had gone), and stuck my head inside now and then to see if the person had left. To the contrary, he (or she, I never knew which) was lounging in the tub, reading a magazine, smoking a pipe (hey, you never know whether a pipe smoker’s male or female in dreams), humming happily to himself. Hearing a noise, I looked over toward the toilet, and a woman and two little kids were bouncing around on the platform playing ball. I went over and said, “Excuse me, I need to use the facilities,” and the woman shrugged and said, “Go ahead.” One of the kids was floating a toy sailboat in the toilet bowl.
I stood around and tried to loom at them and convince them to go away, but it didn’t work, and I really needed to go (no, I neither wet the bed nor had to get up and go, nor did any biological processes actually occur while I was on the dream-toilet—it transformed into a chair). I started to climb up the platform, and Ryan appeared to caution me about being careful and not falling, and he and Chris insisted on boosting me up over a ridge thing so I wouldn’t break my neck. Obviously, the two little kids turned into Ryan, and Chris, but grown up (or nearly so).
It turned out that RJ was planning to take a new job and move to some place in … Indiana? Not sure, but it was far away and sounded like the outer rim of earth (more so than North Dakota?!? sheesh!), and this made me very sad. I thought about my friends, and the Raging Grannies, and all the things I couldn’t take with; but I felt I had to go because I knew RJ wouldn’t enforce any sort of schedule or routine for Chris, and that Chris needed structure to manage life. At this point, the boys seemed maybe 10-ish.
Not long after, I woke up, and this is one of those dreams that’s continued to leave a wash of sadness behind it. No idea why; it’s a perfectly lovely day in the neighborhood and the birds are having a good time on the feeder. Well, those are dreams for ya, I guess.
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