I found myself in the dreamscape being carried by another person.
I was full grown, my own self now, I am nearly 60 years old. A woman was carrying me in a curious way I was mostly prone, somehow- lying flat, her arms were underneath my body. This woman was small, my own size. How is she managing to do this? Was my first thought.
It was not until that thought passed and I considered the physics of it all, and observed the cadence of her walk upon the road we were traveling, that I recognized my mother. She was quite young, many years younger than she was when she gave birth to me, but I recognized her easily.
She just smiled.
It was cloudy and a bit cold, the low clouds were spitting rain like grains of sand but I was not uncomfortable. I could see that Mama expended little to no effort carrying me along. Really none at all, she wasn’t struggling in the least. Her shoulders seemed sturdy, everything about her energy was quite strong, and determined.
“Where are we?” I think I may have whispered the words mostly to myself as I looked at our surroundings. We were walking along a riverbank on an old stone road, and I could see the other rivers and I knew exactly where we were. I have been here before. We were in Germany. This was Passau.
“I lived here for quite a while,” My mama said noting my recognition. Setting me down and letting me walk on my own wasn’t something that came up, or something that we discussed. It somehow fit with whatever was going on.
At that moment she used her head to gesture to some houses along one of the river’s banks. “You know Hitler lived just over there,” She said that with a deep almost forceful sigh. No. I actually did not know this. Did he really?
The next moments were felt by me only energetically from this woman who carried me as an egg, birthed me and told me story upon story as I grew into my now self. All of her stories, and more she never told me, or told anyone, swirled like a black tornado that definitely could obliterate anything in its path. Her own soul and life force redirected the energy.
Destruction wasn’t an allowed option.
She looked at me with hard, determined eyes. A small but dazzling set of sparkles sat atop the deep black pupils. I thought of diamonds. Pressure can create tremendous strength.
I’d always thought my mama was an extraordinary woman, but as a very young woman she was more than just extraordinary. She was simply fearless. And she was truly heroic in the pure definition of the word. In many ways, her actions saved a number of lives during the horrors of WW2. She was beautiful, but she was also whip smart, and never allowed herself to be cornered or defeated by any situation in which she found herself. Even as the youngest in her family, even with both of her parents dead, she inspired the rest of them to endure. Once even snatching up and dumping down the sink the poison they were all considering drinking to simply die and get it all over with.
She looked at me evenly and with the smallest lift of her chin she said, “I’m going to show you how to get through this.”
I put my head in the crook of her neck and caught a sob in my throat.
I woke up crying.
