Well it happened - every time I’m on Tylenol 3, I end up at some point dreaming about my family. It always involves my mom’s side of the family - until this time.
This time my dad and his mother were involved, as well as my brother and some friends.
It’s also been over a year at least since I dreamt a tornado dream. For me, tornados signify change in my life.
I was at a mall with sherpa and another friend G, who reminds me of my brother…the brother I wish I had. My biological brother was there, too. I can’t remember where my dad and my grandma went, or if they were at the mall at all. Grandma was being pushed by dad in a wheelchair. She was very old and frail and didn’t speak. Dad looked younger in the dream (to match the age he was when grandma was still alive in the wheelchair, I guess, which would have been 1985 [she died in 1987]).
I remember walking home to my dad’s house from the mall. This is the house he no longer lives in, which he sold to a young couple who had tragedy befall them not long after moving in, while they were putting a second story on the house. I’ve always held that my grandfather’s ghost wasn’t happy with them and so he punished them. Seriously, the man’s ghost gave me and my dad grief when we lived in that old house, too.
The nearest mall to my dad’s house would have been Livonia Mall (if it is still there). I was walking up the driveway from the neighbor’s yard, which I cut through on my way home. I was making my way up towards the wood deck balcony (which in real life was in the back yard, but in the dream it was attached to the front of the house), when I realised that sherpa and my dad and grandma were not far behind me.
The next thing I noticed in the dream at this point is that the house and yard were not facing the road, it was facing the forest. It was placed in reverse on the lot for the dream.
I liked that view much better, but it’s not what I grew up looking at, so it felt a bit weird even when in the dream.
The forest was a pleasant mix of yellows and browns, because it was Autumn. The sun was starting to go down, and I stared pleasantly out at the forest.
Sherpa came up behind me and stood next to me, staring out at the forest. My dad wheeled grandma up onto the balcony and was preparing to take her inside the house when suddenly everything went black, like someone turned off the lights, only we were outside, so it was the sun that went black. Then we heard a very loud vibrating voom-voom-voom-voom-voom noise as I made out a giant black mass swirling about in the forest just off to the right of the house. I panicked and yelled TORNADO! and we all scrambled to get dad and grandma through the front door
and into the house.
Inside the house, it looked like an empty apartment living room. There was barely any furniture. We all sat in the living room.
Daylight reappeared long enough for sherpa and I to peek outside the front door, before it all went black again, and sherpa and I scrambled to the center of the living room with my dad and grandma. I got down on my belly and reached for the TV, which was sitting on the carpet in a corner of the living room. I turned on the TV but as soon as I did so, we lost power. I reached for the telephone and phoned up my brother’s cell phone. The telephone I was using was analog, so it worked even with the power out. Dan answered his phone cautiously and I told him there was a tornado raging outside, and he’d better seek shelter immediately. He told me that he and G were at the indoor rock climbing place at the mall, and that they should be fine. He sounded wary for us, though.
Sherpa was by now looking for a safer place for us to huddle, while my dad stood tense in the middle of the living room, not letting go of grandma’s wheelchair, while grandma just sat there hunched over, a dementia patient with a frozen smile on her face. But her eyes - you could see she knew what was going on, and she was eyeballing me. Her eyes told me not to worry.
The noise of the tornado passed, and daylight emerged once again, although by now it was approaching dusk anyway.
I opened the front door, and sherpa came bounding out and ran into the woods to go exploring. I noticed that the valley forest was laid out a bit differently than when I was growing up - I could see that the development from homes on the other side had made its way into the forest - people had built official paths and bridges to walk over. I could see the people who had been caught in the storm coming up out of the forest. Some had tarps over their heads and some had black garbage bags, some had only their Autumn coats on. A couple walked past the house through our front yard (I always hated when people did that in real life, although they didn’t walk directly in front of the house, it was further down by the street, which admittedly had no sidewalk). The couple had been grocery shopping and had gotten caught in the storm while carrying their groceries home. All of the people I saw looked middle class and white - the sort of people you’d find in my dad’s neighborhood when I was growing up.
I went to the right side of the house and stepped down from the balcony. I followed the dirt path along the side of the house towards the back yard, and watched the forest as I often liked to do. Soon, either my brother or my friend G came up to me and asked if everyone was all right. I told him how the sky went black and that I saw the twister, and described the noise as a quick vibrating “voom voom vooom vooom” to him as he nodded.
We were walking back up towards the front porch to go in and see dad and
grandma as we talked. When we got to the front of the house, my brother was saying that it was time to go home, that mom would be worried. Dad was preparing to load us all up in his truck to take us home.
END DREAM
I’ve been saying for awhile that my friend sherpa’s coming six-month sabbatical to New Zealand will change her, and we’re all curious as to what changes she’ll return with.
Transposing my brother and my friend G in the dream is not unusual for me to parse, because as I said, my friend G reminds me of my brother in looks and actions, yet he is the Good Brother I wished I’d had, as opposed to the militant fundamentalist Christian redneck law-evading mother-swindling brother I have.
My father and my grandmother in the dream disturbs me. My dad is getting up in age. My grandma’s telling me that through the change (tornado), it will be okay, makes me think that my dad will fall sick again, or worse, and honestly, I’m still not any more prepared for it this time than I was last time.
The old house on the lot further instills fear in me, because it deals with the idea of estate tied to my father. It being turned around might mean trouble in handling the estate should something happen to my dad. In this case, the only thing I could see getting in the way is in fact my brother, who is convinced to this day that my father’s wife is out to take my dad’s money, his half of the property, and everything he owned before the marriage once he dies.
And the general idea that the forest has changed - well that has come to pass in reality already, that much I know. The area has been being built up for years, and now they’re building a five-lane highway right in front of that old house. The couple who own it now, on whom tragedy befell - they are either selling the property to developers or to my dad’s neighbor, last I heard. They hadn’t made up their minds yet. The tragedy that befell them was this: they’re a young couple with kids. The husband was playing on the large front lawn with his buddy and they were using potato guns. His friend fired at him close-range and he went blind. The ensuing years in dealing with being blind, and therefore not being the breadwinner in the family anymore, and resulting severe depression put the marriage in the shitter, and the wife left him.
I swear, I still see grandpa’s ghost on that property, telling them they deserved it for changing his old house. He was a mean, mean man, from what my dad tells me.
Anyway. Autumn is another worrying point. The forest told me it was Autumn.
In Michigan where I grew up, Autumn is when things die.
This is all so not good. I do not have any financial means to go home right
now. I can scramble to start saving, but is it already too late?
The last time I recorded a tornado dream, it involved my mom and I at her house. She refused to get out of the front yard in fetal position. She wouldn’t budge as I tried to take her back into the house. That dream was on January 9, 2003.
Four months later, on Mother’s Day weekend, her mother died.
