Birthday Cake and Bears

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Last night's dream:

The cake was the most important thing. I had to get the cake for my 16-year-old daughter's birthday. Some other mom had ordered it for us, insisting there had to be a fancy cake and a party when, really, our lives were unraveling. This other mom had planned everything--picked a date and a time and sent out invitations. My daughters and I were between houses, halfway moved, not sure where to sleep and what belongings were where. A party seemed impossible. 

The cake was from a special bakery in an L.A. neighborhood I'd never been to. Some inner city suburb, or it's own separate town within the city. It had an interesting name I've been trying all morning to remember. Hidalgo. Trivalgo. Something pleasant and slightly exotic. I looked it up on the map on my phone. Oh. There. It wasn't far. We drove over a huge bridge, a friend and I, to get there. There was a taxi stand and an information kiosk at the bridge. I didn't quite remember the name of the bakery, even though the other mother had told me twice. Dark something. Or something Black. I looked up bakeries on my iPhone. Dark Orpheus was the name of one of the bakeries, so I asked the information guy where it was. Walk through the canyon, the guy said. It's so beautiful. So we left my car parked near the bridge and set out. 

The canyon was deep and lined with fallen leaves. The walls of the canyon were pocked with small caves. There was bear scat on the trail.  By now, my younger daughter (not the birthday girl) had joined my friend and me, and so I had to worry, not just for my friend and me, but for my daughter too. I knew a bear would find us. At the very end of the the canyon, we had to scale a rock wall to get out. The hand and foot holds were easy, but we had to climb past a deep cave. The bear came roaring out of the cave just as I was near the top of the rocks. My friend covered himself in leaves and the bear tore past him. Run, I yelled. Shouldn't I play dead? he asked. Run, I yelled again, and he got to his feet, the leaves sticking to him so that he looked like a person made of leaves. My daughter was far behind. I turned and could see her blond ponytail bobbing as she took a steeper part of the canyon wall at a run, charging to the top like a super-hero. The bear didn't chase us.

There was something somber about the bakery. The wait staff wore black t-shirts and black pants and black bow ties. I couldn't remember the name of the mother who ordered the cake, so I asked if they had a birthday cake with my daughter's name on it. They did. It was tall with a hard shell of dark chocolate icing. It was elegantly decorated, her name written in a swirling script.  But we didn't want to carry the cake all the way back to the car, so I went to get the car, but there was some kind of problem, and now it was getting late. The bakery might be closed when we got back, so I took a taxi and had the taxi driver call them and plead, all the while I was getting texts from my friend to hurry. They wouldn't give the cake to anyone but me. 

I made it. But no one had money for the taxi back, so we walked, marveling at the city. There were many ornate tall buildings and terrazzo sidewalks. We cut through the lobby of a classic cinema, balancing the cake in its box while we admired the gold mortar between the dark granite blocks of the smooth and sparkling walls. We have to come back here, we said.

But now had to get to the party. But where was the party? New house? Old house? Would my daughter's father come? He'd said he would, but we knew maybe he wouldn't. Should some of us go to one house and the rest to the other house in case some guests showed up at the wrong place?

Somehow the party happened. People seemed to have a nice time. The house looked good. There were patters of food shining in the candlelight. My ex-husband was there. He and I spoke. Some mystery was revealed, but this morning I have no idea what it was. And I never got a piece of that cake.

******

I'm always grateful for an elaborate dream. And even though I'm often scared when I dream of bears, this bear incident resolved itself rather easily, even though I know that in real life a person can't outrun a bear. 

I Googled the name of the bakery. You never know. There's a restaurant called Orpheus New Orleans Cuisine. It's in New Zealand. 

Interesting that there is still some processing of the divorce and mothering of teen-agers. But even that felt like a welcome respite from the current political reality.

What have you been dreaming about?

Bears

I am afraid of being eaten by a wild animal. Bears. Sharks. Mountain lions. Alligators. Crocodiles.

This is how the summary of the first hike on a trip I'm about to take to Alaska reads: "View nesting bald eagles, beavers, moose and bears in their natural habitat. The guide, a naturalist, (carries a shotgun) takes you...."

I really think I'll be fine. I don't really think I'll be eaten alive by a bear. I think I'm more likely to keel over with fright if there's an encounter with a bear. And then be eaten. But at least then I won't know I'm being eaten.

I went through a period of dreaming about bears a couple years ago. If you're so inclined, you can read about that HERE,  HERE, AND HERE.

When I first moved my mother in with me, she frequently woke me up with her growling/moaning sounds. Until I got used to it, I was convinced there was a wild animal stalking my house.

I took a hike in the back country of Wyoming once. Across a ravine there was a grizzly bear ravaging some berry bushes. We moved on. Rather quickly, singing the Hey bear, ho bear, go away bear song. Just a short way into our long hike back to our cabin, I noticed that the trail was lined with berry bushes. Then we saw bear prints. We'd already studied our wildlife guide and knew how to identify grizzly prints.  Yep. There were those long claws. I doubt that I ran the 12 miles down that mountain screaming, but the adrenaline my body generated made me feel like I had. We had dinner that night at  Jenny Lake Lodge. Mid-way through dinner, I began running a fever, which somehow contributed to the surreal deliciousness of the meal. I guess if you're going to see a bear on the trail, that's a great way for the story to end.

Wild Night

I recall power outages as stealthy things. Suddenly you woke aware that it was lighter outside that it should be. The face of your plug-in alarm clock frozen. Your heart sinking with the knowledge that you were already late for work.

Nowadays, the power-less silence has found its voice. When the power went out here last night around 4:00 a.m., the noise woke me. Beep from the security system. Chirp from the carbon monoxide detector. Beeebeeep from my mother's oxygen machine (don't worry, she only uses it at night and can survive quite well without it.) Thankfully the security system only beeped once. Not like the overly courteous system at my old house. But the noise was good. It woke me, and I took a battery-powered lantern downstairs to my mom's bathroom. She was already awake. "Now you can see if you need to get up," I told her."
"What time is it?" she asked.
"Four,"I said.
"What?" she said. I grabbed the lantern and held up four fingers. "What time is it?" she asked again.
"One, two, three, four," I said again.
"Okay," she said. "Four-O-One."
"Right," I said. Although it was probably 4:05 by then.

I couldn't sleep. So I read some more of "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed and tried not to freak out as my mom yelled and talked in her sleep. Eventually,I drifted off and woke to the clatter of my printer re-booting itself around 5:00. My feet were killing me when I woke. I guess I was hiking with Cheryl in the ten minutes or so that I slept. Luckily the pain was just part of the dream, and my feet were fine as I went back downstairs to check on my mom. She was sitting on the side of her bed, already resetting her clock. Maybe she'd been hiking with us, too--shouting at bears, or foxes, or trying to scare Sasquatch away.

photo credit: todrinkthewildair.com

The Bear is Back

My mother and I were living in a big house with a lot of people. A bear lived with us. Or came inside frequently, invited or not. It was part of the evening's entertainment to watch the bear. Look! He's interested in the books. Look how he stands on his toes when he wants to reach something! Just like us! Sometimes he swayed to the music on the stereo, and it was almost like dancing. But when we watched the bear we had to hide the little girl who lived with us. It was a given that a couple of people would hold an old sheet up in front of her while we spied on the bear so he would not see her and eat her. I was terrified of the bear and hid behind the sheet with the girl, fighting my hysteria while my housemates looked at me disapprovingly. One night the bear came into my room. I crawled out my window into the damp, grassy yard. "Mom, mom, help me," I called. She was coming, she said. But I woke up before she got there. There I was, safe in my bed, the water a gray-green early morning sheen outside my window.

This isn't the first time I've had a bear dream. And there's another bear dream here with a wonderful analysis by my friend Jules. And of course, there was the the bear that wasn't actually a bear.

Bears. In real life I am fucking terrified of them. I do like to see that goofy news footage though when a bear shows up in someone's Jacuzzi. But I'd be heading off to a hotel if it was my Jacuzzi.

Bears and Babies--not baby bears

Therapy is not in my budget right now, and I have to do something with this dream. Any Jungians out there, feel free to comment.

The bears were invading Altadena. There were apple orchards, and the growers left barrels of apples sitting around. They gave apples to the Waldorf school up there in the shadow of the San Gabriel mountains so the kids could have nutritious organic snacks, and those apples were sitting around outside, too. The bears got word and came down the mountain. 

I was living up there in a big old house with my sister Van and my brother Mike. They were young--as if the dream took place decades ago, but I was the age I am now, I think. We had a baby we were raising, and a bear came into the house. I saw the bear and grabbed the baby, but the bear caught us as I was running up the steps. I thought it best not to pull the baby's foot from the bear's mouth. The bear wasn't biting the baby. Just licking. Licking like it was the most delicious baby it had ever tasted. "Quick!" I called. "Get the peanut butter!" And Van and Mike came with soup spoons and long-handled serving spoons and spatulas, scooping peanut butter as they ran toward me and the baby. They waved the spoons at the bear and the bear turned around, leaving me to run upstairs with the baby where I could hide and block the door with all the furniture in the nearest bedroom room. Through the railing, I could see Van and Mike dropping the spoons one by one; the bear pawing and licking them as if they were lollipops as Van and Mike backed away. 

In real life the only animal that scares me more than bears is sharks. Critter jitters. I can get them really bad. Babies I'm okay with.

Some days the writer eats the bear; some days the bear eats the writer

The writer's group was small, and we didn't seem to have a leader. I agreed to attend because I thought I knew one of the participants. She and I had been in a class together at UCLA, and since then she's had quite a bit of success. A nice contact, I thought. And I liked her writing. The meeting place was a house in a clearing near the woods. A bit ramshackle. White peeling paint outside and dull white inside, everything yellowing around the edges. The kitchen held a large 1950s-style table, metal-edged and sunk like a battleship into the sagging middle of the room. This is where we would workshop, bond, comb through one another's words with care and cunning.

The caretaker of the property came by to say a few words. Easy on the plumbing, ladies. He was holding something. A rake, a rifle, or a shovel--upright, Pa Kettle style. Oh, and mind the bears. Don't leave the door open. One of us was a country girl--not tamed and citified like me, and we looked at her when the caretaker mentioned the bears. She shrugged, but seemed a little nervous. The place was a cracker-box. Tilting and warped. None of the doors closed properly. The furniture like dollhouse furniture that had been played with by generations of little girls. Legs worn down, finials of headboards snapped off. Wobbly chairs, blinded mirrors. Rusty rings in the bathtubs made me think of the ancient trees in the woods and how their innards would look if someone sawed them down. Here we were, writers in the midst of all this ruin trying to make something out of the ruination in our heads.

But--dinner! Out to the steakhouse down the road. Everyone getting ready. Showers and blow dryers, and all I can think of is icy water, blown fuses and a house full of dark. But the hot water holds out. Almost ready. A young woman named Lisa is being a pain in the ass. Too much mascara and running from mirror to mirror with the cord to her hair dryer trailing her like a tail. She is in everyone's way. Passing her in the doorway of the room where I'll sleep, I see the bed is lumpy and wonder what the hell she did to mess up my bed. But the lump is a bear. Two bears--mother and baby under the quilt. Bear, I announce to the group. Bear in my room. In my bed. It's like a reverse Goldilocks story, and somehow I must be the one to take charge because the bears are in my bed. I close the door and retreat to the kitchen as everyone gathers.

And here comes Lisa. Deaf to the bear talk, but with her hair just-so, she's come through my bedroom from an adjoining room and now has flung the hallway door open just as the baby bear stirs. A baby bear she says, stepping back into the bedroom to pick him up. All eyes but hers are now fixed on the mother bear; a narrow hallway and a door barely tethered to its hinges are all that is between the mother and the group of us cowered in the kitchen. Shut the goddamned door, Lisa. As if it will hold against the bear. But Lisa is cuddling the baby. Nestled against her, it looks half changeling, half human. Shut the door. But no one is listening. Everyone is looking at me as if I am in charge, but not one person will do what I say.



Thanks to my friend Julie for providing the opportunity to snap this picture. I don't know whom to thank for dreaming about bears.