What got your attention, the horrible giant spider or the sweet deceased grandmother? The combo is a little off-putting, I suppose.
There’s a point. Stick with me.
I’ve had two significant recurring dreams that took place in the late ’80s/early ’90s when I was a bit of a discombobulated teen. By the grace of God and some daily acting routines, I got by.
I think dreams are fascinating. I don’t buy into dreams forecasting the future or being some profound message from God. I do believe, however, that they can give us new perspective as the brain connects emotion, memory, and facts in creative ways we are often incapable of doing when conscious.
As I’m writing slight variations of these two dreams into my novel, I discovered a link between them (it only took 30 years). The character in the novel having the dreams demonstrates just a shadow of the same linkage.
Here are the abridged versions of the dreams and the link I found…and maybe you’ll get something for yourself out of it.
Dream 1: Grandma Langemo (dreamed this twice as a teen; first when I was maybe 16…four years after her death)
Quick backdrop on Grandma (Mildred) Langemo:
She was a gem. My favorite memories of her, specifically, include helping her with the chicken on the rotisserie in the back porch, watching her drink tomato juice (why?!?!), one hairpin holding a curl on either side of her head, her amazing laugh, playing piano and singing (“Five foot two, eyes of blue…”), her incredible flower and vegetable garden, and a gift she gave each of us: a small picture of her and Grandpa that she said we should put on the floor to scare away the mice. There was an amber glass candy dish on their kitchen counter for chocolate covered peanuts. I loved them. So did Grandpa. He would get so mad at me digging for them. When he’d walk away, Grandma would wink and hand me some and then send me to the porch or outside to eat them. Ha!
Grandma Langemo went to be with the Lord when I was in 6th grade. I remember I couldn’t do my school patrol shift (odd trivia to remember). I don’t think I’ve experienced such a great loss as I did then.
The dream
Grandma’s funeral and reception was done. We were staying at their house in Deer Creek.
My family took Grandpa out for dinner to his and Grandmas favorite restaurant and I stayed home to babysit my niece, Sadie. [note: in my dream, I was 16, not 12…an anachronism my brain created]
She was sleeping in the blue room at the end of the hall on the second floor. It had a built-in dresser, big closet, one window, and a bed in the middle. There was also an old crib [in the dream…I think there was in real life, too].
Anyway, I put Sadie down and went downstairs to sit in Grandma’s recliner to read. I could hear Sadie cooing and making other baby noises.
Suddenly, a silence hit the house…like a vacuum. I couldn’t hear a thing.
In a panic, I bounded upstairs to check on her.
I opened the door and my heart stopped as I saw the crib was empty.
I turned to the bed. There was Grandma Langemo with Sadie fast asleep in her arms. She looked up at me with her sweet smile and laughing eyes – hair curled as perfectly as when she was alive.
“Don’t be afraid, Tommy. I’m in heaven. You will be, too. This will all pass and all will be well. It will all be okay. You’ll be fine.”
I woke up. End of dream.
Dream 2: The Spider (dreamed this at least three times, also as a teen)
I dreamed I was walking down highway 55, where there used to be an antique store [maybe there still is?], right on the corner of 55 and Oak Avenue (downtown/main street).
As I turned the corner onto Oak Avenue, all the cars started to simply coast silently and slowly down the street, and everything turned into black and white, just like an old movie.
The only light came from streetlamps. No people. Even the cars were empty…just coasting forward.
I started to panic and make a beeline to our house, which at that time was right on Oak Avenue.
I felt someone is behind me. I turned and saw a man with a 20’s fedora in a fine looking suit – and sunglasses.
I turned back to keep walking, and heard the man pick up his pace.
I did the same, my panic rising. The man sped up, almost at a run.
I turned again.
The man paused and raised his arms which grow up and out, and hairs sprout all over the limbs. His legs did the same, while four other appendages ripped through the suit, which ends up tattered on the ground. The sunglasses and hat fell as pincers pierced through the man’s face and the head expanded. His eyes bulged into large dark orbs as two other eyes pushed through his forehead on either side of his larger eyes, and then two more under each of those.
The spider was about 8 feet long and 6 feet tall, not counting the legs, which bent in horrific height and length.
The spider reared up and screeched…and then charged.
I broke into a run, sprinting down Oak Avenue as fast as I could toward home, but home kept feeling further away…for some reason I couldn’t reach it. [For those of you who know Oak Avenue, if you’re heading north along downtown, our house was the one kitty-korner from St. Ignatius]
I knew I wouldn’t make it home in time as the spider closed in on me. I could hear the scratching of the claws on the pavement.
I saw an old friend’s house. [But this friend wasn’t from Annandale and this didn’t look at all like his actual house…aren’t our brains interesting?!]
Anyway, I banged at the door, yelling for him to let me in.
The door opened and there stood my friend with a pale, deadpan look.
He raised his hand slowly and pointed behind me.
I turned to see the spider rearing up for the inevitable kill.
I screamed. And woke up.
So…a giant spider and a dead grandmother walk into a brain…
The connection made is that they were representations of two sides of the same coin, but my brain was playing with both in separate dreams.
In the spider dream, I think it’s one big allegory of feeling alone, lost, not knowing who to trust and maybe those who you thought you could trust might fail (don’t we all at one point or another?). I think it’s about the mundane becoming scary…which is completely irrational, but VERY REAL when you are broken emotionally, mentally, or spiritually.
How often do the smallest things start looking like big monsters to tackle.
How often do you feel people you want to trust simply don’t deliver (on your expectations)?
In the Grandma dream, it’s not dismissing the troubles, but focusing on the reassurance of the promise God already made for me. Grandma was a personification of all the goodness that I truly did have in life. I do not believe that my dear Grandma Langemo came from beyond the grave to give me a blessing. She’s in heaven completely distracted by the glory of the Trinity, our heavenly home, and the gathering of saints. She’s good. I believe my dream was simply remembering that this same, wonderful promise of His is also mine and has already been given. It was reassurance from what I already knew to be true in the brain God created in me.
How often does a moment of gratitude change your perspective?
Some things to think about, anyway. The writing process is a great way to explore the recesses of one’s mind…do battle with the demons and turn them into a story of hope.
In the novel, these dreams play a slightly different role…still about big problems in life and reassurance toward victory…but characters and elements are shifted slightly to tie to other plot points…and t’s left to the reader to determine whether the dreams are prophetic/real or unconscious neuroscience in action).
a tilting of air 