A Surprise Visit from an Old Friend!

10/16/2007 - Last night's dream.

I haven't been remembering my dreams enough to even put a cohesive sentence together about them for several weeks, just snips and bits here and there.
Last night, however, I remembered a little more.

My old college roommate and friend, H-, showed up unannounced or on very short notice to visit and see me. She was in the dream still pregnant, I think (last time I talked to her in the waking world she was, although she would have given birth by now). Or maybe I was instead. She was going to stay with me for several days or weeks. She mentioned the traffic driving down here from S-, and we also talked about what route I would take later on to drive into work to avoid traffic problems. I talked to someone on a cell phone several times during this, possibly my husband, checking in about what was going on. The weather was gray and rainy, just like in the waking world at this time. She was very energetic, bouncy, and very casual/friendly with me, despite the fact that it has been years since we have seen each other. It was unclear to me how long she was planning to stay, and I was trying to make arrangements for this without making it too obvious, although I was very happy to see her and glad she had come. I think she was wearing a black and red outfit.


In the waking world, after a sudden initial contact several months ago and over the last couple of months, following a silence of many years, she has stopped responding and I'm no longer able to get in touch with her. This was something that always bothered me greatly in the time between losing touch with her after college and the sudden happy contact at the end of last year and a few times since then, and has again been bothering me that she has dropped out of sight once more.

Vacation and reunion with an old friend

Saturday 9/15 - Last night's dream (Friday night)
I went to stay in a small town near the shore, at first I thought it was near the ocean, because there was a huge misty bay with lots of waves. I walked down to the shore by myself and watched them roll in. But later in the dream, when I am high on the hill I can see the other side, so maybe it was a river.

We are at a vacation house, I and various unidentified members of my family. My college friend, Il-, who I haven't seen for so long, is coming there too, and I am so excited to see her again. There is a row of hotels/apartments in tall, narrow colorful buildings, sort of like those San Francisco row houses you see pictures of, but more Victorian and slightly less garish looking. They range down the street curving over a hill, facing the water.

When Il- arrives I go next door to see her. She brings her husband with her, whom I have never met before. However, he looks sort of like her fiance that I knew in college (whom we both dislike now), even though I know he doesn't actually look at all like him, and even consider this thought in the dream. We are very happy to see each other again, and spend time going back and forth between the apartments and trying to catch up.

Later, I take her up to the hill above the town, and point across the river. We must have been in W-, because I tell her, "Do you see those hills across the water? That's O- over there." They are very green and it seems amazing that we are looking at another state across the water, like when you cross the straits of Juan de Fuca and see Canada where there was nothing before, and it's another country... for some reason it feels unique even though they're all the same ground with nothing intrinsically different between.

As we watch, the immensely wide river valley in between the bodies of land is filling up with fog and mist settling on the water.

There is a lot of interaction in the dream between us, talking and catching up haltingly, and other family members pop in (I don't know if my husband does), but all that is faded.

The overall feeling was that full, excited, intense, fearful feeling of meeting someone you were close to after a long time, and the joy that keeps full when it goes right. I missed her more when I awoke, and once again puzzled over that mysterious bond of friendship that glues two people together tightly and strongly and almost instantly, even through little shared time together, and really not even knowing that much about each other... while at the same time you can spend day in and out with so many other people in your life and even know them better and it never happens.

In the waking world, I took a vacation for a couple of days to the beach with my family, but it didn't look like this. And no Il-. I haven't seen her in years.

All Hallows Dream, in which a cat comes back

It's Halloween. I am going to some kind of party, wearing all black and a red hooded cloak (no, until now I didn't think of any connection to little red riding hood). I think I'm just trying to look different than usual, not dressed as something. I spend a fair amount of time sorting through very similar looking clothes in my closet, in a room much like the one I grew up in at my parents house (it might be that one). I do go to the get-together, and sort of hang around awkwardly not knowing what is going on, which is fairly accurate (except, in real life I don’t celebrate Halloween anymore). Darkness is falling.

Somehow I find out that my cat, which was apparently missing for some time, and has been found by somebody and taken to some kind of shelter. The cat in question is C-, who actually died several years ago, but in the dream he was still alive, just lost. I am absolutely overjoyed to get the call. I go with my husband to go find this place. We drive down drizzly logging roads at dusk. Near somewhere that looks like the road where I grew up, we see a young girl with a small pony, riding up the road. I mention to my husband that there used to be a pony at the end of the road that would escape and come down to our house. But then I realize that that pony has surely passed on by now, and this must be a different pony. It is also smaller and browner, almost the size of a Shetland pony.

We get to the place where the cat is being kept, which actually looks kind of like I imagine a preschool or kindergarten would look inside. There are a number of small children, and lots of children's drawings and brightly colored letters and such on the walls, but there are also dividers sort of like cubicles. A short round woman, probably about 40, with light abundant curly hair pulled back into something like a ponytail talks to us about the cat. She seems reluctant to turn him over, and somewhat disapproving of my having lost him. When I see him, he looks actually quite a bit different than C- looked in real life, but in the dream he looks like I expect. He is black like C-, but he also has a small white mark on his chest, and a smaller one next to his left ear, which C- didn't have, and he has some very small brown/torti marks on his face. In the dream, however, he looks "right" and I am very happy to have found him. I have not brought a cat carrier (typical), so I borrow my husband's jacket, which is a light tan one, pick up the cat and wrap him in it tightly with his head out (he is somewhat frightened and jumpy and all claws). I remember all of this part very clearly, and we go back to the car to take him home.