This week, I’ve been waking up around 4 or 5 and not returning to Morpheus’ withdrawn arms. This morning, probably around 6:30 or 7, I fell into one of those odd dreamish states where you know what’s going on and you usually kinda-sorta know it’s a dream, but it seems extremely real.
This one involved some old stuff of Mom’s that I’d found in a couple of boxes I’d never seen before. Stuff that seemed peculiar, but given that she taught home ec before it became consumer education (because heavens forfend any of us should be anything but consumers), they made sense.
One was an oddly constructed dress, on a slightly rusted wire hanger, that sported a first-prize sticker from a state fair. It looked like an ordinary blue cotton dress, but had been constructed in a deliberately difficult manner. It was roughly the size I might have worn at fourish, but I had no memory of it. It contained three white zippers with decorative pulls, placed about one inch apart, that zipped just to left of center up the back to about the lower end of the scapula, then curved a bit more to the left until they reached the shoulder seam.
Another was much larger and also had a first-prize sticker on it. Only folded—no hanger—this one was green, not sure what kind of fabric, and also designed to show off construction skills. It had box pleats in the skirt and I think the insides of the pleats were a different pattern, but I don’t remember for sure. If they were, it was a subtle difference, not like black outside with neon-pink polka dots inside.
A couple of other garments were in the box; I didn’t look at them too closely. Underneath them were a bunch of very large (like 18″x24″) black-and-white photographs on a kind of photo paper I haven’t seen since about 1960 (but was probably discontinued many years before that). Some had a little writing on the front (I didn’t recognize the handwriting, but somehow knew it was Cousin Laura’s [not sure of the name, but that’s who she was in the dream]—an older woman, Mom’s first cousin, who lived… I think down the road a ways from where Mom grew up, but I was only at her house once or twice so can’t be sure. She was quite an expert on our family history, though.
Each of the photos had fairly extensive explanatory information on the back in Laura’s handwriting. It looked as if they’d been done in grease pencil (do those still exist?!), and not very sharp ones, so were grainy and hard to read. The top photo was of quite a handsome young African-American man, dressed to the nines and with his hair carefully arranged so a few curly tendrils fell down his forehead, while the sides were quite a bit shorter. His name was Edward Drummond Jr. (not a name I know from any of our family history on either side). If there was info on how or whether he was related, I don’t recall that; I just remember being both surprised and not surprised that some DNA of African descent was mixed in with all that Irish. (According to Ancestry.com, completely untrue; I’m the whitest old white woman in the Western Hemisphere, and it really annoys me. I’d rather have some interesting old family members other than pirates, Bart.s, and nefarious monsters.)
Other photos showed dignified, portly white gentlemen with moustaches the size of Pennsylvania; women with bonnets that, filled with helium, could have floated them to the moon; and various other things I’d expect to find in boxes of old family photos. Each one had equally detailed info on the subject/s and I intended to get this transcribed ASAP (I was aware enough to know it would disappear, at least).
I made the mistake of trying to adjust a pillow at this point, which derailed the whole thing beyond retrieval.
What knocked me back was that I’d had no previous knowledge of any of this. Once I realized it was a dream, of course, this made sense; but not until then. And that made me a little sad, because I don’t have tons of stuff that was my mom’s. Three vases from the 1930s and 40s; a Pakistani enameled brass tray; a little of her “good” silverware; and a couple of pieces of Nambé ware, one of which is a bowl that announces her Teacher of the Year award in its, well, bowl. I don’t really know what to do with any of them. (Nambé ware used to be a super high-quality, high-dollar item produced in northern New Mexico; it didn’t rust or tarnish and was really lightweight, freezer-to-oven style stuff. Unconventionally shaped, it screamed “way beyond classy” during my childhood. I went hunting for it not long ago and found it’s been bought by some gharstly forn outfit and debased into a bare shadow of its former glory.)
Anyway, that ruined that one and I had to stagger out of bed and greet (for once!!) the sunshine.
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