10:52 PM - 11.10.04
Family Day
My day has been bracketed by dreams/nightmares dear diary. I just woke up from a nap - Thankgiving does that to one doesn`t it. It seemed I was both wife of a caucasian male and the mother of a caucasian daughter who had married a man from Japan. My spouse in the dream was a "partier" who only came home to be abusive. The dream went weird here in terms of the time space continuum we know, living as we do in the fourth dimension. Suddenly his bar mates were a group of young marines from Japan. He decided to desert our children (3 maybe) and me to go to military college in Japan. He took all the money we had except for $279 and said that was what the children and I were to survive on until he returned. I was glad he was going, because he had never supported us anyway and it meant an end to the abuse. I hoped fate would arrange it so he would never return.
Suddenly my spouse turned into the Japanese husband of my daughter. Now he had his mother in tow with him and they both were here visiting North America. He told me he was going to leave his mother with my daughter and me and that I would be required to do her bidding without question or argument. Both he and my spouse were now wearing formal military kimonos.
I have a hanging in my dining room of a man from the Japanese warrior class. One of number three son`s best buddies in school had a father who had been born in Japan, while his mother had come as a refugee from Chile. They met in English as second language courses when they first emigrated here. They were often very kind to my son and me after his Dad left, I think partly because I occasionally assisted their son with school projects. He was in a special school for gifted children in junior and senior high. When I helped him he would do very well mark-wise, mostly his own intelligence I think, but it was nice to be recognized as a tutor. When they could, the family would visit their grandparents in both Chile and Japan. One of the visits resulted in the presentation of the wall hanging to my son upon their return.
Anyway, the son-in-law in the dream was ordering me, while he was preparing for his flight back to Japan, as the inferior adult female - his cultural perception of me since I was the mother of the married daughter not the married son - to house and wait on his mother while he and my spouse were gone. The mother of my son in law was named Geiko and she was standing off to one side wearing a spring kimono made from orange and pink silk. I was, according to the son in law, to even be certain I jumped up and changed television channels for his mother whenever she decided she wanted to watch something different, whether I liked her choice or not. I could see my "spouse" sitting out in an old style jeep waiting for him leering and laughing as the son in law talked.
He spoke up and said that he had made that arrangement and confirmed it as the man and head of the household in our family, for the son in law. He tried to order me to be subordinate to the son in law since it was his "rightful" place. He stated that because he had adopted the Japanese culture as his own I was obligated as his wife to do as I was told. My response was that no real man deserts his family and that he could never claim head of the household status because he had never supported us even when he was living in Canada. I think I said, because he was at a safe distance and unable to return, that his real name was parasite. I also noted that no one could take my citizenship or my heritage away from me regardless of who they thought they were.
I then turned to the son in law and told him that he was on Canadian soil and that meant he was subject to Canadian laws. That meant he could not impose his customs on me against my will. My "spouse" was sitting looking on angrily at that juncture, but he knew he had lost the gambit and lost face with his new drinking buddies. He boarded the airplane and it was clear he didn`t intend to return. I felt sorry for the son in law`s mother, because she was being used by my spouse and my daughter`s spouse as a pawn to try and gain power and control over me and my children. It was obvious she knew that, and obvious also that she had no wish to be left behind in Canada while her son went off to school in Japan. There was no animosity between us and it appeared we had become friends earlier in the relationship. When I kept repeating that the law here was Canadian law, she turned and boarded the airplane with the men, looking back sadly at me. She had no trouble accepting my stand on the issue. I think she wanted to go home to be with her family rather than being deserted in a foreign land by her son. What was it he really meant to gain by exploiting his mother that way?
The first dream of the day had been a nightmare in reality. It was six o`clock in the am and I thought the brother of the liaison was trying to break in to my room/home. He was armed with a knife and was intent on hurting me. I was terrified he was going to be able to get in to my bedroom and I was trying to call the police to come quickly. He had cut the landlines before he began trying to force entry, but he had forgotten I had a cell phone. He exploded with rage when he saw me talking on it, but it made him try harder to get in before the police arrived. He was banging on the window with the machete he had brought with him. I found it so frightening at that point that I woke up. Didn`t go back to bed either until I came home from dinner with my family - I was just too afraid to go back into my bedroom. The nightmare was very much like the ones I had for years after the boys` Dad left - I kept dreaming he was going to break in one night to kill me. I don`t need that kind of dream starting up again. No offense intended, but men are scary creatures.
Dinner was companionable. Before the event, my Dad and sons number three and five arrived with the new to me sofa set. Took the old beast to the dump. The cats were ecstatic until they learned that sharpening their claws on the new model meant a blast from number six son`s water guns. The colours in the suite mean I have no option but to paint my walls the same purple that now graces the walls in my bedroom. Number three son thought royal purple would work even better, but in a north facing room, in a winter country it might be too dark for the space. Don`t have the money for paint really, but since I appear to be homebound for at least a few days, and since the walls haven`t been painted in the last decade it may be a project I take on. Psychologically I need all the boosts I can get.
We arrived at my brother`s home after a drive toward the mountains - all dressed in their fall finery and breathtaking under a clear blue sky. Travelling music was Matthew Good, Ra, Tea Party, and Nickleback - all good. Three of my guys are going to see Matthew Good`s concert this week, while my brother and his girlfriend are off to see Sting and Annie Lennox tonight, we were just doing the warm-up don`t you know. It was warm enough to take a stroll along the river pathway just dressed in light summer clothes shortly after had our Thanksgiving buffet. Sun warming us as we watched fisherfolk and pet lovers share the same open spaces. Canada geese still waddling along the banks of the river in places and evidence of a colony of beavers who had seemed intent on creating their own residence in the lagoon. Evidence of fish and wildlife staff trying to stop the home building in the wire fencing around the base of each and every tree within 100 feet of the river.
I read cards for most every one and talk around the table turned to things unexplainable by normal means. Dad was telling the story about a trip he and my Mom had made to a town in the middle of a province that neither of them had ever visited before. He said my Mom started describing the exact layout and decor of the town in detail, long before they arrived and she spoke of a diving accident that had taken the life of a teen one summer, also in minute detail. When they reached the town, it was exactly as she had described it and the woman who ran the post office confirmed my Mom`s description of the accident noting it had happened 40 or 50 years earlier - before my parents had been born. It was a small town, so it wasn`t likely that my Mom had ever read about it and then just forgotten until they arrived that day. Speculation around the table about whether it might have been a past life remembrance or a clairvoyant incident. Knowing my Mom`s abilities, I would guess the second in that case.
I have had vivid, frightening remembrances of what seems to be past lives in dreams since I was two years old. Given that we didn`t have tv when I was small, the information I recalled couldn`t have been from there and the actions I saw were well out of the experience or knowledge of a two year old child growing up in Calgary. I couldn`t even give a name to what I dreamt until I was about 12 and I was reading about the war in which the dream seemed to be set. As I read, the detail started playing across my mind even more specifically and overwhelmingly than the nightmares I had had when I was little. Couldn`t I have been a princess instead?
My brother was telling us about a program on CBC that explored the phenomenon. Apparently, subjects are hypnotized, then regressed until they appear to be in a past life experience. The reporter, who anchors the show, then goes to the site they describe and tries to locate evidence of that life. One of the last sessions had him in an old section of Chicago looking for evidence of the lifestyle described as early 1920`s. A docent or curator of a local library confirmed that it was a little known fact that the part of the city described had been a base for booze runners and speakeasy`s during that time. Think I`ll have to try catching the next episode.
Watched a bit of football - Toronto - Montreal, and then a video of my Dad`s appearance on a local morning show. They were celebrating their 50th year as a station and were featuring businesses that had been around at the time. Since my Dad`s business supports their livelihood in many ways, he and some of his older techs were featured at the store talking about conditions and beliefs that were common at that time. Every family has it`s own celebrities you know. When supper time rolled around my sons went off for a second dinner at their Dad`s family and I came home to cats and a nap. My brother`s girlfriend and her sister handed me a set of Yanni CDs and a Riverdance soundtrack as I walked out the door. The consensus around the table earlier was that the assignment I had was too risky and they were glad I had quit. I think, though, they realize that that stress plus the stress of not having work now is really getting to me. It was their way of offering support I think. Visits to my doctor and chiropractor, then clean up and planting bulbs for next years blossoms on tap for tomorrow since the weather person says this summery weather is due to last a couple more days.
�
�
