MaMa / Kids

Friday night

Dream 1: MaMa

I was back in my parents' house in Arlington, in the upstairs bedroom used by my dad's mother prior to her death in 1990. I opened the lower left drawer of her dresser and found that she had kept one of my childhood toys there.

Suddenly I heard a commotion outside, and walked over to the other side of the room in order to look down on the front yard. Her casket was being carried back into the house; there was to be another funeral for her, all these years later. The casket itself was old-fashioned, rectangular and black.

Dad was downstairs, getting prepared for the service. I wasn't sure whether I'd go out to the re-burial or not. My brother Jimmie was also in the house, and chose that occasion to tell me that a novelist from Chile had just moved in to a house around the corner.

Dream 2: Kids

I had a ticket to see the Baltimore Orioles play a home game at Camden Yards, and was to meet some friends there. In the meantime, I needed to use the bathroom, so I stopped by the friends' house, although I knew that they had already left for the ballpark. I knocked on the door and the babysitter answered. I told her who I was, and she let me in. I walked downstairs and found a large circular room filled with retarded and 'slow' children. My father-in-law was there, playing with them and entertaining them. Part of the floor was covered with snow, and he was showing the children how to use a Flexible Flyer sled. He laid down on his stomach and was steering with his hands.

*****

Dream 1:

We called my paternal grandmother "MaMa," with the a pronounced as in the word "back." She died in 1983, not 1990, and she never lived in my parents' house, although she visited there many times. Her bedroom in the dream was actually my parents' bedroom.

I attended MaMa's funeral in South Carolina, and she did not have an "old-timey" coffin.

That funeral was the occasion of one of my favorite family stories. Dad and I were standing together at the graveyard, talking with one of his cousins, when Dad said, "When my time comes, I don't want to have an open casket." The cousin looked at the size of Dad's waist and said, "Jamie, you might have to!"

Dream 2:

I called my brother Andrew last Friday and we had a good laugh about a baseball game the other day in which the Orioles lost to the Texas Rangers, 30-3. I asked him about the pitchers' earned run averages. He said, "Put it this way -- the first pitcher gave up 6 runs, and he had the good outing."

My father-in-law is visiting us here this weekend.

We've been going through an awful heat wave lately in Nashville. The other day a coworker said, "I bet this means we'll have an awful winter, with lots of snow." I said, "That would be great!" I haven't had a reason to take my Flexible Flyer out of the shed for awhile.