I had a weird dream. Growing up, my brother and I shared a HUGE bedroom on the second floor of our modest farmhouse. My parents had the bedroom to the left of the stairs and our bedroom was to the right. In the center of our bedroom we created a *divider* of sorts. Large dressers and a wardrobe blocked the view and made the one room two. Dad always promised us that he was going to make use a real divider wall someday, but that someday never came.

My grandma had the bedroom off of the living room downstairs. When grandmawas very sick in the hospital, my parents started taking to sleeping downstairs…and I started *moving in* to my parents room across the hall. I was 15 and very, very ready for my own space. This of course left my brother with the HUGE bedroom all to himself. Funny thing is, I think and dream about the house I grew up in all the time but I never remember that bedroom as my own. Ever. I think it was about a year total that I spent time living there.

A few months after grandma passed away, dad ended up in the hospital with cancer and died four months later.

Mom remarried yet another speedy year later and we moved to the dairy farm in Cassadaga…

So I found this dream last night very unnerving. It has been quite sometime since I had a dream that took place in the house I grew up in, although not uncommon to say the least.

I guess the dream takes place in the present day…I am the me I am now, but living at home and in the bedroom I hardly knew as a child. My brother’s HUGE room across the hallway is still HUGE and all of his furniture is there, but of course he is not living at our childhood home. He is living at the house he bought with his wife and daughter. Only I live at home still, and the only thing that happens in this dream is I am fighting with my mom to let me have my brother’s room cause he doesn’t live there anymore and it is bigger than mine and I deserve to have the entire upstairs since Lil Brother has his own house and family and doesn’t need the room anymore. The end.

Yikes. No grand themes being repressed there, eh? Perhaps it had something to do with the mass amounts of red juice in fancy glasses followed by bubbly looking clear colored liquid and a beer or two last night. (In bed, conked out at 10 pm, yesterday was a busy day!) And perhaps all the talk about feeling/not feeling like an ADULT yet? And hanging out with our married friends who have a baby? I dunno. I just don’t know. ]

I alternately crave being settled in that “married with children” adult way at the same exact time that I crave fleeing and needing adventure and moving to San Fran or China for a few years before being ready to do this exact thing I say I crave. Seriously, lots of talk out loud about trying to do Teach For America or something of that nature in San Fran, where Mark can study Wing Chun, lately. Pipe dream? Perhaps. But it’s comforting and NICE to know that this option exists.

Of course Mark and I talk frequently about little Odysseus and the timeline that might be involved in making our imaginary son become, well real? (And likely a daughter cause I imagine having all little boys now that I met the man who will father my children. I previously expected a little Irish Dancing Jenny with pigtails and ripped tights, but that image is lost behind strong visions of our little Olin.)

Marriage will not change this on again/off again outlook. I already did the hyperventilating over the impending cohabitation last June. Moving in for us, was implied engagement…which meant. Well, lots of scary things for me. And wonderful things too.

We can still decide to teach English in China or move to a large city for a while, but we both know where we would like to end up, and that is likely here in WNY. We both even speak of wanting the life we grew up with to a point, a lot more rural living. Either city? Or rural life for us. (But for the whole job situation and friends here in the city, I would love to move back home home someday when raising a family.) Gulp. Raising a family. Oooh raising a family! YIKES raising a family!

Family and baby means a whole different set of compromises of life that I am not certain I will ever be fully ready to embrace. Even if I might never pick up and move to China for two years? I know that I can. And I know I found a partner in crime for life who thinks the same exact way I do. Which is scary/perfect in itself, which one of is is grounded again?

Ah, dreams, they do get the inner consciousness of our lives flowing… And I’m not sure this tidbit fits here, but our friend Don last night, after a glass or two of the red stuff in fancy glasses said to me, “your medium is life.”

Some people work in oil paints, some in percussion…but mine? Life. I liked this statement, a lot.