Recurring Dream

I used to have this very scary recurring dream. I haven’t had it in years. In fact, when I think of it, I see it through the eyes of my seven-year-old self, which is to say that I don’t remember the details of it. I remember the color red. And black. And a huge mass—perhaps a rubber band ball—that is twirling and turning and wrapping around something. Although I can see it from a bird’s eye view, that something it's enveloping feels like me. I am in the middle of this vice as it is clamping down on me in slow motion. Meanwhile, I hear a cacophony of sounds, tinny sounds that are slightly louder and faster and higher in pitch than they are in reality. I simultaneously hear people talking, dogs barking, music playing, ambient noise; all jumbled together like an excerpt of Revolution #9. And when I’d wake up, startled having sweat through my nightgown, I’d not be able to shake that horrible feeling--that I was slowly being suffocated while the dissonant sounds of the world whizzed around me.

Naturally, I would run to my parents’ room to ask for comfort. “I had a bad dream,” I would tell my mother. “What was it about?” she sleepily would reply. Not knowing how to describe what I had just experienced, I would tell her I had a dream wherein I was in a car that was rolling down a hill and I couldn’t make it stop.

Clever, you are thinking, that I could improvise on the spot such a realistic alternative dream. Not really. As it were, my mother had mentioned to me that she had a recurring dream as a child. In this dream, she was trapped in a car with another little girl unable to apply the breaks while the car was rolling backwards. In her dream, her father could be seen on the horizon clutching his stomach, doubled over in pain. I thought that telling her that we shared the same recurring dream would make her sympathize with my pain. For the most part, I was right. Upon hearing the story, she would often let me sleep in the bed with her, whereas she’d usually turn me away when I woke her for other reasons.

The more interesting part in regards to my mother’s recurring dream is that, after 5 or so years of having this dream and explaining it to her mother, it came to life. When she was about 11 years old, her parents moved into a house on the hill. By this time, she had 2 sisters. One of them, Lynne, was in playing with her in their father’s station wagon, parked on the circular driveway in front of the house. Something happened, my mother pulled the emergency brake or shifted gears, and the car started rolling backwards. Both girls were screaming, my mother yelling, “My dream! My dream!” The car rolled down the driveway and into the street, where it slowly came to a halt. Thank God there were no oncoming cars speeding around the bend. Upon hearing the story, my grandmother immediately recognized the similarities between the dream (as told to her by my mother) and the real-life event. That night, my grandfather had to be hospitalized with what turned out to be a bleeding ulcer, making the reenactment of my mother’s dream complete.