Dreamy watercolors

I had a funky dream last night that we (friends maybe?) drove by my childhood home one afternoon. We went around the back way where an alley abuts the back yard. I was totally overwhelmed emotionally and started blubbering like a little kid, I mean really sobbing. I was saying something about how much bigger the yard used to look when I was small, how I used to climb that tree and gorge myself on the figs, how I used to jump off that tool shed with my homemade cardboard wings, how I was afraid of that ivy hedge. All this between great gulps of air like a kid who's cried himself out of breath. They didn't understand. Nobody did. I'm not sure I do.

That house, believe it or not, features pretty often in my dreams. Maybe I should say dream because it's usually a variation on the same dream. I'm usually walking back home from a few miles away, nothing too far, but far enough that I'm nervous about getting home--will I get there in time? Will it get dark? Will I be too tired? Will something happen to me on the way there? Currently, I still live in the same city, but in a different house. For some reason, though, in my dream I always wind up at that childhood home, knocking on the door, looking through the window, wondering if anyone's home, wondering who's home. It's been so long I wonder if my parents still live there. Did they move away? I'm always a little sad, anxious, hopeful, expectant,--a mish-mash of emotions.

Hmmm.... My best guess is that these dreams are about that proverbial theme "You can't go back home again." It's sort of a mourning of the loss of childhood innocence? Sounds trite, but there's something there.

Remember when you were a kid and got a brand new set of watercolors in those trays with the eight or so hard little cakes of brilliant primary colors? Remember how satisfying it was to place a wet brush on that virgin cake of red and watch that water become an inviting slurry of artistic potential? And then you got creative, thinking you can make new colors by mixing a little green with yellow. And red with orange. And purple with yellow---wait a second! Your pallet's not looking so brilliant anymore. The florid colors now take on a uniform brownish hue. Now your hands are smudged. That artistic potential inspire by the red doesn't quite make it through your hands without you screwing it up a bit. You still see some swaths of bright primary colors on your paper, but they've begun to run and mix together and turn brown. Your paper is smudged with your dirty fingerprints. You put your watercolors away and wait for next Christmas (or Christ-mas. Follow my metaphor?) to get a new set of watercolors. That’s really the answer, of course. That yellow just ain’t never gonna look the same until you get a new set of watercolors!

So what brought up that dream last night? Not sure. I’ve got a couple things up in the air that have me a little anxious, I admit. Still, nothing to blubber about! My yellow's still in decent shape. Well, it was just a dream….