22 Dec 2024
Dream
I've been out with Mark and he had been helping me move my mom's belongings and also cleaning up the yard and landscape after she died. It is a mild afternoon and Mark is his pickup truck full of stuff with another guy helping, and he asks me to get him something to drink. He hands me some cash that I take but at first try to give him back but he refuses.
I go to the food place and want to also get something to eat. I forgot what Mark ordered but decide to rely on thr menu board on the wall to refresh my memory. As I'm waiting, other servers at the big counter are explaining to women in front of me that the costs are comparable to beverages at other places. They have a series of drink sizes which looks to be an individual glass size or a bowl size that would be for several people. The women already know this about the prices and no one is impressed but we all accept the cost of things.
I vacillate on food as I wait and finally determine that I'll just get the drinks. Mark wanted a prepared drink that is something like a slush. I read the flavor choices and there is chocolate and aqua or Agua and several other options. I think I'll get three different ones and then Mark can select the one he wants most, I'm pretty sure it's aqua or Agua. And the other guy and I can have the rest. I'll use some of Mark's money and some of my own.
I must have returned because now I see my brother with another guy in a pickup truck telling me he's helped himself to all my pots and pans from my bedroom at my parents old house and they want to give them to a buddy who's now got his own place. I say no, those are mine and please move them with my things but I offer to go through them and find some suitable for their friend. They seem to be willing to comply.
Then I am back at the house which used to be my parents house and I am in the process of emptying it out. It is also a crime scene of what seems multiple nefarious things like theft, but none very violent or extreme that I am aware of. My uncle Micky is there thinking he's helping out, but he's just trying to make himself important really, and he is misunderstanding everything and interrogating me.
Apparently while I had been out moving things with Mark and my brother also moving things, my uncle has called to report my pots and pans missing. At first when he tells me, I'm grateful that he called the police to report it and I say "thank you" because this time it's nor only me reporting what's wrong and been stolen, but I quickly realize he's mistaken.
As we are talking, I'm explaining to him how my parents had relied on me to do all the home repairs and it was a never-ending effort. I say how I'd repaired ceilings and walls and done alot of physical work but some of the problems were too big and I'd not had a chance to finish. Instead of understanding me, he just criticizes me more though, and tells me the house and all the walls are a mess. When I tell him my parents never paid me, that initially seems to pique his attention and possible empathy, but he quickly turns it into more condemnation of me and implies I was a freeloader because my parents let me stay with them yet I never finished what they needed me to do. And I also try to help him understand by comparing my results to all I'd done at my mom's last home at Wallace Avenue, which I'd renovated entirely by myself for her to live comfortably [by reconfigured the kitchen, adding a second bathroom with walk-in tub, adding a ramp to front door, and lots of other repairs] and I mention I'd painted all those walls there.
My uncle is stuck up, snooty and self-centered. He didn't understand my parents and he doesn't understand me. He is judging based on his own assumptions and likely projections but I know he's wrong about me and my family. I don't even bother telling him about my brother and the pots and pans, as I'd rather just talk with the police when they arrive.
Meanwhile, my uncle criticizes old wallpaper on the walls and two holes in the floor near the entrance. The wallpaper was only a cosmetic issue and I know we--mostly me--was handling the bigger structural priorities in the right order of things, so I ignore his wallpaper comments. But I'm confused about the holes and since so many things have already been moved, I'm having to struggle to remember exactly what might have been affixed to the floor right there and ripped out. I am also grappling with coming to terms with fully realizing how much pressure and expectation my parents put on me to heal and fix their problems instead of focusing on my own life. And I somehow realize that I am the one left unsettled and moving around trying to navigate where I can be safe and secure. Either way, I will figure it all out, as I'm the one keeping track of everything.
The holes are perfect square shapes and there must have been a bookcase there. I will get to the bottom of it. I know it will come to me.
The police come and there are many people surrounding the house and investigating us. They take their time and go in their own order. They'd already gotten my uncle's statement. Then my brother walks by smug and smiling that he has answered all their questions and seems to have told him his also limited view of things. [Somehow my brother resembles Cole, a young smart man with dark curly hair and glasses in my writing group who had taught me the phrase "creative nonfiction, and his bubbly smirking expression also reminds me of Ed a former mental patient I had worked with many years ago who had been raised by his grandmother and later tried to poison a college classmate with rat poison when he was living in the dormitory. ] Between my uncle and my brother's likely stories, it likely looks sketchy and probably makes me look bad.
I help a female plain clothes investigator who has arrived now to navigate the front steps and deck at the entrance to the house. There's a flat part in between the levels, which is a narrow passage way without any railing that might be slippery, so I advise her safely. She has shoulder length hair that is light brown and I think she has glasses on a cord around her neck and maybe her ID as well. She is subdued, professional and seems nice.
I wait until they call me in to sit down in the living room and answer their questions. I tell them I think I can straighten things out, as they make comments that the stories don't add up.
Then I am called into the living room. As I'm sitting in front of the woman investigator, other police investigators come in and sit near me. They are wearing brown suits with skinny brown ties and white shirts. They are plain white men who look nondescript except that they could have been in an undercover role in the 1950s in a movie or real life. And they all seem to be taking mental notes.
I think my brother and my uncle are there in the same room now, too. Someone says something about the order of events and that it's Saturday. I am confused because I hadn't realized it was Saturday already, and I'm trying to get oriented to the right day it is but no one is helping me. The woman is also organizing her notes on a clipboard.
I don't want to answer questions inaccurately, and I speak up again for clarification of today's day of the week but I'm being ignored. My uncle Micky finally says to me that it is "Saturday the 23rd," and casually adds "Mardi Gras," and I find that date in my phone calendar right away. Now I am satisfied that I know what day it is and I can answer the questions fully and bring illumination.
I'm about to explain the sequence of events to the investigators and explain it all to them that different people are working on emptying the house and the pots and pans are just a misunderstanding. All of a sudden, the two men sitting next to me in the brown suits have their heads both explode, except what had been their heads seemed to morph first into even plainer round white spheres more like big water balloons, which started to swell and burst with a bang, caused a big fog, then dissipated right away. Everyone is stunned that their heads exploded except me. Though I had not expected that happening, I'm not surprised as little surprises me in this house now. And in a way it seems a comfort to me to have other witnesses now to see the violent and shocking display.
Someone makes a comment about ghost possession and I nod to offer soft agreement. But really I don't think the men themselves are ghosts. While there may have been supernatural intervention that had their heads blow off at that precise time, I suspect the underlying issue is that they had only been robots to begin with. I'm not afraid of ghosts or robots or really anything. I just don't like the misunderstandings and judgements, but I realize once again, that I'm the strongest and least ruffled person here. And I'm the one to sort it out and make sense of it for others.
