nap dreams

I had some nightmares while napping this afternoon. One sad, one scary. I was in a large house in a neighborhood that backed up onto a river, a very small river that was really more of a creek in size. There were rows of rickety wooden lawn chairs between the house and the river, facing the house. I was sitting in one at dusk with my feet up on the wall of the house, and I looked down and realized the legs of the lawnchair were only about 2 inches from the rim of the riverbank. I moved the lawnchair closer to the house and continued reading my mail. One piece was a flyer for a dentist’s office that featured a large photo of a little girl that looked just like Brittney might have at that age. Another one was for an insurance company that also featured a large photo of Brittney, and I knew that she didn’t know they had used her photo.

The house I was at alternated between being Auntie Fran’s house (although it didn’t look anything like her actual house) and a shed on Grandma’s property (which she didn’t actually have in real life).

I got out of my lawn chair and realized that I could go see Grandma’s house. On the other side of the river were rows of new condominiums and fancy shops, facing away from us. I knew that her house was somewhere in those rows of condos, and that the beach and ocean must be on the other side. Bob came outside and we decided to walk across the “river” and onto a sidewalk on the other side that paralleled the river. We walked for a little ways until we came to a T where the sidewalk turned and went between two of the shops out onto the beach on the other side. At this point the timing of the dream changed from dusk to bright daylight.

On the beach, I kept looking at the shopfronts trying to find Grandma’s house. Hundreds of teenagers were hanging out on the beach and on the front porches of the condo units and in front of the stores. I recognized some of the features of the beach, like the bulkhead wall, but all along the beach, the bank was only about six feet tall. I started crying and I couldn’t stop, and I couldn’t figure out why. Bob and I kept walking and looking for Grandma’s house, and none of the houses looked anything like hers. Finally I just sat down in the sand and began to sob.

That’s when I woke up, “dry crying.” Sobbing without tears. It was weird.

In another part of the dream, I was at the movies with Doc, in a huge theatre with non-stadium-style seating. Before the movie was over, the management asked everyone in our section of seats to clear out. We didn’t take them seriously, and we didn’t think anyone else in our section moved either. As the credits began to roll, our whole section of seats suddenly jerked forward and, as if it was on carnival-ride tracks, rolled forward underneath the stage, and dived DOWN, moving faster and faster downhill in pitch blackness. We had no idea what was happening or where we were going (storage? a giant crushing machine) or if we could ever get out.