In Their Defense / The Next Best Thing

Monday night

Dream 1: In Their Defense

I was having a conversation with a black woman about the Air Force. She seemed to be disparaging their contribution(s), compared to other branches of the military. She said, "You fly someplace, then you walk out of the plane. That's not such a big deal." I countered, "If they have to fly around the world to deliver supplies or something, I'm sure it's awfully fatiguing. It's not like they can stop the plane [half way] and get out."

Dream 2: The Next Best Thing

Somehow I was able to buy the house across from 3374 on Dinwiddie Street, so I could always look across the street at the home where I grew up. At this point my parents' house had changed; it was two stories higher in the front, and the maple tree in the front yard was much larger, too. In contrast, I was moving into a single-story ranch-style house, but I was pretty satisfied with the whole thing, anyway. I thought, "Now, Mom can call me up whenever she wants me to talk to me about her garden, and I'll always be here for the neighborhood block parties."

A few relatives were helping me move in: my aunt Eunie (mom's sister) and my dad's aunt "Outie." At one point Eunie and Outie found themselves in a room on the right side of the house (to your right if you were walking up to the front door). Eunie wanted to speak with Outie about a piece of family jewelery, but Outie was all business, and was focusing on the task at hand. She said, "I don't have time for that." She had other things that she had to do, so she reached out to give me a hug, and as I embraced her, I noticed how tiny she was. She had long gray hair which hung down past her shoulders. After saying goodbye, she walked back into the living room and met her horse, which was waiting there for her. She climbed up into the saddle, and rode outside.

*****

Dream 1: In Their Defense

It's pretty odd for me to be defending the military. I'm usually against most things that they are asked to do, but I supported sending the troops into Afghanistan.

Dream 2: The Next Best Thing

The people who bought my parents' old house did add one story, but I'm pretty sure that the change is not visible in the front of the house.

While my father-in-law was here this past weekend, we visited an old plantation in Franklin, TN, and saw some very large old trees on the grounds. When we got home, we found websites that featured pictures and locations of the largest "champion" trees in Nashville, and in Arlington. I suppose that that's why the maple in the front yard was extra large in this dream.

Outie got her name because when her youngest brother (my grandfather) was born, he pronounced Ruthie as "Outie." Outie was born in the early 1890s, so to me, she was always ancient, even when she came to visit us during beach vacations in the 1970s. She became a little addled in her later years, and lived until 1989. I never remember her being a forceful woman, as she was in this episode. I don't recall ever seeing her with long hair, or going without eyeglasses. (She wasn't wearing glasses in this dream.) And I never saw her with a horse, although she must have seen plenty of them in her youth.

Eunie was always fun to be around. She and I always talked about our shared interest in birdwatching. She and Outie probably met only once, at my parents' wedding in Washington, D.C., in 1957. Eunie passed away five years ago tomorrow.