Getting A Man At The Mall

Tuesday night/Wednesday morning's dream - 3/16/2011

I don't remember the earlier part of this dream, but somehow I ended up going to a mall. It wasn't a mall I know in real life, it might even have been in a different city. It was evening. I was carrying my son with me. I met S- there, who I haven't seen in a long time (the time period was current or slightly in the future, so I really haven't). What I can't remember now is if we were intentionally meeting there, or if I knew he was going to be there so I went there. At any rate, I knew he was going to be there and I wasn't surprised to see him, but rather I was looking for him and looking forward to it nervously.

Initially I went in to the mall and went to some different stores, and then I went to this counter where you could renew your passport or book travel tickets. Possibly, you could also get visa stamps there. I think the first time I saw him was around there, he was coming away from the counter. I was looking for him to be somewhere, I'd already been at the mall for a while basically just wandering around passing the time until I met him. I went to him immediately and hugged him, like when I said goodbye the last time I saw him in real life. He hugged me back but I got the feeling that I was hugging longer than he intended and he might be uncomfortable, by the time I broke away. We chatted and caught up. He had just returned from a trip visiting his family back home in J-. His trip came out through Lebanon and apparently this is why he was visiting this travel counter. Also he was planning another trip there soon. He chatted a little bit catching me up on his family, etc, his brother's recent marriage and child, and so forth, and then he went off to do something in another part of the mall that he had been on his way to. I hung around the area and went to some nearby stores, then I saw him again at the travel counter and I went there myself ( to run into him). I said, I was also planning a vacation in Lebanon soon myself, and we talked some more at the counter. I got my passport stamped or something for my trip. It seems I came up with this on the spur of the moment, because in my head, I was making plans at that time how I could request a week off work in a week or two, and actually take the trip, to make it coincide. I could actually do this, I thought, and decided to just then. We talked about going together since we would be there at the same time. Most of this time I was thinking in my head vs. paying attention to what we were actually saying, so I don't really remember most of the conversations but there was a lot of "hanging out chatting" type of conversation, and another half hug at my departure. After I was done with my activities at the ticket counter, they were still working on his, so I didn't have any clear reason to keep hanging around, though I still wanted to spend time with him. So I drifted to the next door store, hoping he would catch up with me again when he got done, though we hadn't specifically made this arrangement. A number of the stores in this mall weren't separated fully into their own entities like in a regular mall, they were more like separate rooms without doors between them, so the transitions between them were a bit odd.

The store I went into next was a bookstore or some kind (next to the travel counter). I looked along a shelf of calendars, they had different themes of different kinds of animals and bugs, then I started looking at a shelf of Anno books for my son. They had Anno's Animals (a very large version, like a supersized version) and then they had another one I'd never seen before which was called Anno's String Games or something similar, and it had a black and white illustration on each page with trees and such, and a person doing some kind of cat's cradle design. There were no words (as typical with Anno books) and no instructions, so it was hard to tell how you were actually supposed to make each design. I was curious about the book flipping through it but decided not to get it for that reason.

While I was flipping through this book, S- came into the bookstore having finished with his travel arrangements, but he saw somebody in the bookstore, a friend or relative who had been browsing, and went over to talk to him (it wasn't somebody I knew, though I'd observed him in the store). It was one of his relatives he'd just seen on his trip back home. In their brief comments (overheard) I realized that when the guy had been at the family get together back home, he let other people there think that he was gay or something as he was not in a relationship, but actually he was involved with (or possibly married to) this girl, who he introduced now to S-. She was a cute American girl with a short blond bob. He was really happy to introduce her to S- and S- was very happy for him and it seemed that the fact that he was with this girl was a big breakthrough in the family dynamics. I gather that some people in the family knew they were together but he hadn't made it evident when S- had last seen him back home.

This news made S- really happy. I knew it was because of me, it was like his cousin being with this girl opened up new possibilities for him or meant the family had decided it was allowable. He came over behind me where I was standing and hugged me from behind really enthusiastically, laughing and happy, to the point that he picked me up around the waist and I lifted my feet off the ground. Still hugging me like this, he whispered very quietly "I love you" in my ear. I was very emotional and happy. I whispered that I love him too, and lifted up his hand to my mouth, kissing it twice just barely, not sure if this was too much. He led me over to the cousin and his wife/girlfriend and introduced me. My mind was a whirlwind of thoughts and I was walking on air. Then, he raced out the back with me (there was an exit from the mall in that store which opened out through glass doors to the back parking lot). I wasn't sure where we were going exactly. I was very happy, but I did have some fleeting thoughts about the past reasons we hadn't been together, but I was too happy to wonder about them too much. We stopped just outside the doors. He wanted to go tell his mother (and possibly other family members) who were parked at the other end of the lot, I said I have to get my stuff, (my son was still inside with the cousin, and my other things) so I stopped at the exit, and he ran off across the lot bounding with excitement. I went to go back in the doors, but I spilled something on two mats outside the entrance, they were like placemats or small rugs that had been on the ground, that were mostly white, and whatever I spilled on them was some kind of food that stained orange, like spaghetti sauce. So I knelt down to clean this up. I could see at the other end of the darkened lot (which had floodlights like a typical mall parking lot, only we were behind the building not in the main lot), he met a woman (his mother) and was talking to her. Pretty soon he ran back to meet me. He asked what I was doing and if I was ready and I explained that I had started to go back in but then I messed up the rugs, holding them up (my attempts to remove the stain hadn't succeeded, just spread it around). He replied "messed on the rugs!" with an expression of fake alarm/grossed out and we both laughed. I said it this way knowing it would sound funny and he would react like that because it was funny and I wanted to see his silly expression, making fun of me like I remembered. It was still fun to be goofy although I was so painfully happy, maybe lightening the all the emotions a bit by both of us laughing. We went in together to collect my son and my things, then I woke up.