Each of the last two mornings I’ve woken up from a dream about a Family Feud … er, family feud.
Yesterday it was about my cousin who was pretty much estranged from his parents the last 15 years of his life (he died in his mid 40s, about 25 years ago). The dream was something about how no one in our family should learn to speak German because he did, but I went ahead and learned German. Which, in fact, I did – a transitory reading knowlege anyway, as required to get my PhD. The cousin died during my last year of grad school, in the next town over, and my mom stayed with me when she came up for the funeral, even though she hadn’t seen the cousin in 15 years because the cousin was estranged from his parents, i.e., my mom’s sister and BIL. Who beat his kids, it turned out, or his male kids, which was apparently what the estrangement was about, though we didn’t find out about Uncle Joe being an abusive asshole till much later. Well, we knew he was an asshole – he didn’t speak to my brother for about 10 years. I don’t remember that whole story. My mom kept speaking to that sister, and the abusive BIL, during that entire period, but not her other sister, from 1962 (when Aunt Adele made a disparaging remark about my haircut – how offensive could an eight-year-old’s haircut be in 1962?) to sometime in the early to mid '70s, when they finally reconciled, based on the machinations of my female cousin, the only one in that household who didn’t get beaten by the abusive uncle.
This morning it was just about living with my father and stepmother, whom I loathed. That was my situation, briefly, before I graduated from high school a year early so I wouldn’t have to live with my father and stepmother. No one was beating anyone, though, I just didn’t like her. So it wasn’t much of a feud.
Weird to have dreams two days in a row about ancient family dynamics, though.
Yes. There is surely some significance in this. A significance which, unfortunately, does not readily lend itself to witty remarks.
So I’ll go with a straight answer: You dreamed about learning something that your cousin also knew, and which the family didn’t want to talk about. (German.) This could possibly represent your learning that his father was abusive, which was probably also something the family didn’t like to talk about.
The next night, you dreamed about another situation involving a not-right parental figure. (your stepmother.)
Off the top of my head, I’m wondering if there is some situation going on where you’re worried about somebody’s parenting; or possibly their relation to some other authority figure? Could even be your own relation to an authority figure. In other words, it sounds like you’re trying to remind yourself that the people in charge aren’t always right.
Not that we need much reminding these days. :rolleyes:
Really? In the interests of clarity, I left out the names on the abusive family – Uncle J, Aunt M – and the estranged son, who was named after his father, and the peacemaking daughter, who was named after her mother …
