Preggers

Recently, a new kind of dream (though I did dream a house-dream not too much previously; I was cleaning out my house/body, and in it, caught a bird whose warm soft body I held protectively in my hand, sensing I for some reason needed to shelter this being). A few nights ago, I dreamt that I was back at my parents' house, though it did not look like their house actually does - it was rather a log cabin, or lodge - thus is the logic of dreams. My friend Raymond was visiting me there, wearing for some reason fur. In this dream, we were closer friends than we actually are in reality; he sat with me in my bed, and I cozied up to his furs. First, he told me his own good news: that he had won another international study abroad grant (he's a fellow Fulbrighter), and that he was planning to study in Ottowa. He pointed it out to me on a map I had on my log-wall, though, and the place he pointed out to me does not actually exist, was some strange liminal land stranded between Canada and Greenland, floating somehow. When his finger touched the map, I had an immediate mental image of snow-swept plains, caves. "Explains the fur," I thought. Then he told me my own good news: that I was going to get pregnant. "Fat chance!" I laughed at him. He insisted that I would. I doubted my brash response...

In dreams, pregnancy doesn't necessarily mean pregnancy. Rather, it is the birth of something new, a new opportunity, a gift. A pregnancy dream is something to be excited about. Why, then, did I laugh? Was there some embittered part of my brain just conscious enough to deny me this dream? And why?

But the shakedown: on the same night, my friend Shadie dreamt that I was pregnant. So perhaps I am expecting...what? Something new; something big? There's a lot I have in the air right now, both new and big.