Weaving The Dream

In my dream, I help two of my adult sons sort and clean out the accumulated toys, papers, and mementos of their childhood in a room that looks and feels like my childhood bedroom, when the third son walks in and asks if his stuffed animal is in here.

In waking life, that stuffed animal was a constant companion to my son from infancy through most of elementary school.  His fuzzy companion traveled next to him in the car to the grocery store and on long trips to my parents.  He was carried from room to room in our house and then tucked next to him in bed at night. 

In the dream, I point out the animal, high on a shelf behind some other childhood treasures.  My son pushes aside the stuffed sock clown, and lunchbox-sized vinyl case to pull down his old friend. The vinyl case falls on his head but doesn’t hurt him.  With the animal in his arms, my son is no longer the tall adult but once again a child, his head the height of my waist.

“Mommy,” he says, “he is so clean!”

“I washed him for you,” I say.  Then suddenly my son has the animal crushed against his chest and is crying.  I know, in the dream, that he cries tears of happiness at recovering this beloved part of his childhood.  I hug him to me, comforting him.

I wake up.

Practicing what I teach others, I name the dream “Reclaiming a Childhood Toy.”

Of course, that stuffed animal was more than a toy to my quiet, introverted son—it was companion, pretend playmate, holder of secrets and fears.  Amulet, touchstone, and lodestone all in one huggable being of fake fur and stuffing.

Though the dream seems to be about my son, and on one level it may be, I also know that the dream is very much and more about me.

For one thing, the dream occurs, not in my sons’ bedrooms, but in my childhood bedroom.  The lunchbox-sized vinyl case that falls on my son looks very much like the case in which I kept my favorite doll, Besty McCall, and her clothes.  That case sits in my adult bedroom as I write…

Too, my son and I share the same astrological sign—we are both Leos.

So how is the dream about me?  Well, as we say in dream circle, if this dream were my dream (and it is), I would think that, in fact, I am clearing out things from the past that no longer serve me – that I have grown beyond.  BUT—and this is an important but—while I may put away the things from childhood that no longer serve me, it is also a necessary and healthy thing, especially for the life and well-being of my creativity, to hold onto the amulets, touchstones, and lodestones of childhood imagination, and thereby hold on to that precious inner child.

My son’s tears of joy in the dream were for a rediscovered part of his childhood—the part that held his imagination and inner peace and contentment, all things that we struggle to attain and maintain, especially as creative adults.

Could this be one of the cures for creative block?  To find a toy or some other beloved object from our childhood that can invoke the joy of being a child again while reminding us of the creative power of our imagination?

So, what am I going to do to honor the dream?  Well, I am going upstairs to get out that doll case…