I'm visiting at my friend's parents' house. It's a large, very beautiful redwood structure with lots of stained glass and a large wrap around porch. There are many people around, and as our stay grows longer I realize that these people are related to my friend. Then I begin to notice the many rundown houses and trailers surrounding his parent's house. The property around the big house is full of little red-painted cabins, most with visqueen tacked on to repair broken windows and leaky roofs. There are also quite a few silver and turquoise trailers sitting in the middle of muddy yards containing old worn out cars. Children play everywhere with mangy dogs and somehow I know that the trailers and shacks are filled with people watching daytime tv, smoking generic cigarettes and drinking pepsi.
Now I'm at my parents' house, not the one they live in now, but the one they lived in in Lakeview, about 20 years ago. A lot of people are around, and it's winter. I can see Christmas lights wrapped around the poles on the back porch and long icecicles hang from the eaves. Suddenly I remember the hot tub on the back porch and decide that a soak in it would be perfect. The hottub is covered with debris...it obviously hasn't been used much lately. I find many sleeping bags and blankets piled on top of it, and recognize some of these as ones that I'd misplaced. I remove these and use them to make a walkway over the ice to the tub. When I lift the lid, I find the water inside the tub filled with fruit. There are some yellow cherries that I remember eating long ago and leaving here. There are cardboard boxes of plums from my grandma's garden. Remarkably, all of this fruit has been perfectly preserved inside the hot water. I clear it out and a lot of people begin to gather, watching me pull things from the tub. After the fruit, I start pulling out large pieces of fish, which are identified by one of the men standing there. The fish is well preserved as well and plans begin to be made to have it for dinner.
Ok...my interpretations....
large house...basically my dream house. My friend's parents are in town and they have a wonderful house like this. I'm not sure how the shacks surrounding it fit in. I'm not connected with the shacks, but somehow I know about them. I think maybe the shacks represent my insecurities about being deserving of having such a nice place, about belonging and fitting in with people like them. The shacks represent my fears that those shacks are the real me...that I don't belong in the big dream house. Also I'm reading Sailor Song by Ken Kesey and the red painted shacks are described there.
My parent's house in Lakeview in winter stands for my wedding to my first husband. The hot tub represents the joy in life that I had then, the fun I had. The blankets stand for things I've loved in the past that've brought me joy and comfort...and finding them again was a reassurance that those things can be found again. The yellow cherries and plums from my grandma's orchard are the simple pleasures..reminding me that those things are still there, and that to seek them out will make me happy. The fish....I dunno, except that fish figure prominently in the book I fell asleep reading.