Saturday, October 18, 2008

Dreams, Grandmothers, Memories



While I was on vacation (about 20 days in Germany, Austria, Italy and Switzerland) I dreamed almost exclusively of my mom. She was in my dreams every night for the first two weeks - only after that did I stop remembering a lot of my dreams. The dreams were varied - some were nightmares, others were not. In some of them she's alive and others she's not. A couple times she was even off in the background, not a part of the 'story line', but just my mom.

I don't remember a lot of the details anymore (almost a month later) unfortunately.

Last night I dreamed about my Grandma Hamilton. Again, unfortunately, the details are vague. All I know is that I was hanging out with my dad's grandmother, my great-grandmother.

Actual memories are these:
Ella Hamilton was born in 1900, and passed away in 1996. I was 14 at the time and I remember her wake. Mary-Jo and Bob sang a folk song about doves, and we all talked about our favorite things about her. I spoke about the fact that she named all of her stuffed animals on her bed at the nursing home. Every time we visited her, she told us all of their names. The only one I remember is a puppy-dog named 'Lovey'. In my mental image of her, she's laughing. Everything about her seems soft and fragile. She would pull coins out of a film canister for us, so my little sister and I could go buy pop or chocolate bars from the vending machine down the hall.

I also have a very vague memory of her which I believe is a much older one, where we are in her apartment with the lion on it and the curvy balcony-rails. She is wearing a green and white dress and apron, and she gave us Guylian chocolates. In this memory I almost think my mom was there instead of my dad - but they split up in 1987 (I think), so that would make me like 5 years old or younger in this memory, and I'm not sure I have memories that far back. How old do people's earliest memories tend to be?

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