I woke up this morning and remembered my dream so perfectly that it is still haunting my day. I rarely experience these kinds of dreams-- the ones that I can visualize as if it really happened to me-- which is why this dream intrigues me so much. Strangely it's based on a wonderful film I recently watched for my screenplay class called The Piano, directed by Jane Campion. I highly recommend it--it's about a mute Irish woman named Ada who is a mail-order bride sent to New Zealand. She brings her daughter and her piano with her, and when she loses the piano at the beginning of the film, she is willing to do ANYthing to win it back. I won't spoil the rest of the story in case you want to see it (and you should).
In my dream I was Ada, and my dream picked up where the film left off (with the exception of a few details). I left New Zealand with my husband and daughter to return to the States, and I discovered that I could speak, since I was removed from my old way of life. When we arrived we swam along the coast to get to our new home (we had no need of a boat, of course) and I swam so fast that I almost ran into things like poles and rocks and such. I had to swim slower so that I wouldn't get too far ahead of the group.
Soon we arrived at a small house that he had purchased for our arrival, and it looked like it was built in the 50's. My husband and I walked into the dining room to find a table for lunch, but the whole room was lined with tables. The funny thing was we couldn't seem to find one that was appropriate, because all of them were shaky and wobbly and none of them had the right amount of chairs, since our two daughters would be joining us.
It was about this point that I surmised that I had amnesia. My husband talked as if I should remember my former life in New Zealand, and it seemed that we had done some things together the past few days that I had no recollection of. He told me that we had gone grocery shopping and bought salad, and sure enough, in the fridge were plates of salad and in our fruit and veg crisper (separate from the fridge) there were piles of fruit. There were even jacket potatoes all ready to be re-heated, and I thought to myself, well that's a nice idea--get them baked and ready to go so they're easy to reheat.
Then he told me our children would arrive soon, and since I didn't know we had children, and because I innately knew that I should learn to love my husband, I asked him to kiss me before our girls arrived, to see if I would like it. It was the most slobbery kiss I've ever experienced--in real life or in a dream :)--and I wanted to spit it all out but didn't, because I desperately wanted to learn to love him. Then our two girls entered the room and we ate, and I felt terrible that I didn't know my own children's names. I was saved because my husband told me that Laura, my old friend, was on the phone to talk to me. Of course I didn't remember Laura, but I talked to her and told her that I had the strangest feeling that I had been dropped out of a drama film and into this life, and that I didn't belong. She laughed, and I could hear her husband laughing on the other end of the line as he listened to me. Laura told me that we lived in Three Sisters, which she told me was in Connecticut. And that's about where the dream ended.
Needless to say, it was an interesting night. The strongest feeling that's left over from the dream, like the dregs left in the bottom of a tea cup, is the desire I had to love my husband, even though I didn't know him, and my efforts to stay physically close to him as we ate lunch, talked to our children, etc., hoping that by pretending to love him I would actually come to love him. And all of this despite the fact that the man I really loved came in and out of the house while we ate, because I knew that my commitment to responsibility (or loyalty?) was greater than him.
Any Freuds out there? I'm open to your interpretations! :)
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