Wednesday, January 05, 2005

Home for the Holidays

We stayed home for the Holidays this year. It seems weird to say that- we stayed home. I'm really an adult now, with my own family and home.

For so many years it was- "I went home for the Holidays," or "I'm going home for Christmas" - "home" always being my parent's house.

Now my parents live in a house I've never lived in, and our shabby Westside apartment has become "home."

This year for the first time, I dreamed California rather than Rochelle. It was a terrible dream, by the way, in which Tobler was supposed to be watching Stew, but forgot about him and left him in the car at Sav-On. I freaked out and ran up there and this lady was standing by the car, judging me. I started trying to drive away but she told me she'd already called the cops and DCFS and that I wasn't going anywhere.

It was a bad dream, but the point is: it was HERE in Santa Monica, at OUR Sav-On. My dreams have finally caught up to my life.

I wonder why it takes dreams so long to catch on? Up until this year, the majority of my dreams were set at the split-level ranch on Turkington Terrace where I spent most of my childhood.

But my family left that house the summer I turned fifteen. We were at a different house on 11th Street for my high school graduation, my college years, and Owen's first Christmas in Illinois.

Yet my dreams were stuck on Turkington- a place I haven't lived for over ten years. The weird thing is that when I lived on Turkington, probably 90% of my dreams took place in the little home on 10th Street I'd lived in before THAT.

Is it just that the subconscious takes a long time to adjust to change? Or is it that as the oldest sibling, it is in my nature to be nostalgic, to be constantly looking back to the glory days when I was the center of my parent's attention (as suggested in The Birth Order Book)?

Anyway, we stayed in L.A. this year- had a visit from my parents a few days after Christmas and spent New Year's Eve at the Hannas (our neighbors across the street). Here are some pictures.

1 comment:

AG said...

That laundry basket looks AWFULY familiar. God bless people with no concept of "wasteful spending".