Odd dream

208.2

I have had a busy day at work, and something really crap-tastic happened this morning that I don't even want to get into.  I am hopeful that it will be resolved.  (I was actually sobbing in my car on the way to a deposition; crying for anything is VERY unusual for me!  My sister opined that perhaps it was PMS causing me to over-react.  I'm not sure, but I am rarely that emotional over ANYTHING.)

Before my day went off the skids, I woke up with the vivid memory of an odd dream.  In my dream, I was staying with friends in a large house.  It wasn't entirely clear who the friends were or where the house was located, but the house itself was sort-of a hybrid between the Rocky Point beach house we visited a couple of weeks ago and my sister's Outer Banks beach house. . . but I don't think I was at the beach in the dream.  Anyway, it was a large house with many bedrooms.

For reasons that are equally unclear, MM was sleeping in a different room from me.  In the dream, I was pregnant and within 3-4 weeks of delivering.  I woke up (in the dream), placed my hands on my abdomen, and realized I wasn't pregnant anymore.  At just about that same moment, a friend of mine from college (let's call him "D") appeared at my bedside holding a newborn wrapped in a blue receiving blanket.  (The friend who was holding the baby is not someone that I ever talk to and rarely even think of!  Our only contact since 1994 has been one email exchange via classmates.com over a year ago.)

"D" proudly presented my baby boy to me and explained that I had "delivered during the night."  He assured me that it was such an easy delivery that I didn't even wake up.  (HA!)  He said that he'd weighed and measured the baby and that he was perfectly normal.  Although D is not a doctor, in real life or in the dream (he's a computer engineer in real life), I accepted this very matter-of-factly and inquired no further.

Everyone around me was calling my baby "James."  Now James is a fine name, but it's not one I would ever choose for my son, for the simple reason that it was my stepfather's name.  My father, who raised me from age 9 on and had no love for my stepdad, would blow a gasket if I named a baby James!  (Aside: my sister briefly toyed with the idea of using our stepdad's surname as a name for her son--it's a lovely name that would've been wholly appropriate--but didn't use it for the same reason I've outlined here.  ;-) )

I couldn't tell my friends what the baby's name actually was, though, because MM and I had not yet decided between "Alexander" and "Colin" prior to the birth.  And MM didn't want to wake up to see the baby; he wanted to sleep and said he could see him later. (!)  So everyone kept calling him James, even when I said it wasn't his name.

The baby was obviously MM's.  He looked exactly like pictures I have seen of MM as a newborn: lots of blonde hair and blue-eyed.  Kinda your typical little Norwegian-American baby.

My ex-boyfriend R--who I have not been with since late 1996--was in the dream also.  Somehow I came to understand that R and I had a baby together who was only a few months older than the newborn, certainly less than six months old. . . . though that is physically impossible!  In addition to the fact that you can't give birth from two separate pregnancies twice in the same year, in real life, R is married and has had a vasectomy.  R's baby didn't live with me, and I don't know where s/he lived; s/he looked like R, though.  (R is Navajo, so he and MM look distinctly different.)

Then the scene changed, and I was with my newborn in an upscale 4-star restaurant in Chicago.  We were waiting to be seated and served, and we were alone.  I had no diaper bag or purse or anything else. . . . just the little "bundle" in my arms.  As we were waiting for the maitre'd to return, the baby started crying.  It was clear that he was hungry, and I had no bottle to give him.  I decided he needed to be nursed and that it wouldn't be a good idea to breast-feed in the waiting area of a 4-star restaurant, so we left and started walking the streets.  I have no clue where MM (or my friends) were at this point!

Dreams are weird.  I suppose a dream analyst could have a field day with this one!