Of Boys and Butterboats

I am sitting up at 0300 our time, awakened by a slightly disturbing dream. In my dream, Daniel and I are together, he has not passed, and I am telling him off for damaging a tape of the group "Bread". This is an odd dream because this particular interaction never happened. When I awoke, I noticed I had some pretty bad heartburn, which likely fuelled the dream. I can only remember one such interaction such as this. Once, when Daniel was about 11, and it was his turn to load the dishwasher, I had a porcelain European butterboat. It is a porcelain device which allows butter to remain in a cool kitchen out of refrigeration for a time, allowing the butter to get soft enough to be spread thinly. These are often used in England, and I was very happy to have found one here. Daniel had hurriedly placed dishes and pots and pans on top of my new butterboat in the sink, when it was his turn to do that chore, and the porcelain knob off the top had badly broken. I remember giving him a hard time about this and insisting he pay for another one. Ours was a plain white French porcelain, and although these are fairly common in England, they are quite rare here. Unfortunately, no other one was found, and so he never had opportunity. It is one of only two times I remember overreacting with Daniel. I still have the butterboat. It waits for Adam to find the right grinding set to grind the sharp knob portion down, so that the butterboat could once again be used. I don't know how I feel about that now. How could it be that my precious boy who broke the butterboat in his haste to get on to doing something else in his short life, could be gone from Earth now, and the butterboat is still here ? There are so many such contradictions. There are toys, soft toys, tapes, electronic toys, and even the battery to his phone which go on occupying space on Earth and are working now almost three years beyond his instant departure from Earth. I will admit that I still find this inexplicable sometimes.
Daniel, I hope you know that no butterboat, no object here on Earth was ever more important than you, or your feelings. I was disappointed about the butterboat, but I had been trying to teach you accountability for the property of others. I am sorry about taking the time to be upset with you about this. I am left with a few memories of which in retrospect, I wish I had done differently. (Of course at this juncture, I wish I had spoiled you too.) I love you, bug, and I will welcome you in my dreams whenever you can get there.



This is the tape that Daniel had accidentally damaged in my dream this evening. I honestly don't think I have a copy of it anymore.

Back to Daniel's Farm

Daniel really loved this place. One of the reasons I did not get a chance to travel as much as I wanted to with him, is that he loved the farm and the animals so much, he did not want to leave much. He enjoyed people visiting, and if you could get him OFF the farm, he would enjoy where you would go, but he loved coming home to the farm. He was a "Day Trip" man. I used to try to get him to go to more places, but he tended to get carsick as I did when I was younger. Oddly, if I drive it doesn't seem to be a problem for me, and I think Daniel would probably have grown to be the same.
You may recall that last year, our few Rhode Island Red chickens and rooster began hatching eggs. The rooster is the one Daniel personally selected and brought home two days before his passing. The rooster (or competing hen ?) killed the first two, and in order to save the chicks, we took each of the eggs from them and placed them into a commercial incubator. We had nearly a hundred percent hatch rate, and as a consequence, we were left with about a hundred chicks, half male and half female. Although we plan to sell some, this leave us in dire need of housing for them. In Virginia, chickens need lots of ventilation, and it helps if you can structure something which can be moved around for cleaning. This week I began to think that a large fenced dog kennel, in a protected edge of forest area, with perches and a doghouse styled home, for inclement weather might be a good idea for some of them. Nice looking dog kennels are quite expensive and so I began looking in livestock sale newspapers and dog breeder newspapers for a used one.They apparently sell very quickly. Finally, I went on Craigslist and found one that had just gone up for sale. A man bought one for his dog who had puppies and now that the puppies have all found homes, he was selling it. Adam and I drove a couple of hours away to see it. Then we bought it, disassembled it for transport in the truck, and brought it home. Now we are in the process of identifying the private clearing near the woods where we will place it,and then we must prepare the area. From working on this yesterday I have tick bites, mosquito bites, chigger bites, and some poison ivy from the place where we bought the kennel. We will need several "housing clusters" for these animals, who already supply all our eggs and eggs for some of our neighbors. Since we have plenty of roosters, I will sell them to good homes at the farmers market, the next time I can get up and get all the way there by 7 am ! Most people really appreciate beautiful and healthy Rhode Island Red roosters. They also watch over their hens quite well.
This morning as I slept I was dreaming about visiting an Hispanic family somewhere, and they were speaking to me in Spanish. Then, someone patted my left foot as I was sleeping, and this was unrelated to the dream. I woke up to see what was going on. My husband was asleep, and the cat was in another room. I am left wondering if Daniel or Dad patted my foot, and woke me from a deep REM sleep. Thus far, I do not know what this means. I am also getting the phrase "water damage"in dream. Again, you may think I am a bereaved mother grasping at straws or you may think I am paying attention to things told to me by people I love who have passed. It's your choice.
Tonight at dinner when I saw my daughter and told her about the 4:30am "foot tapping", Stephanie reminded me that Daniel used to pat someone's feet while they were dosing or sleeping so as not to startle them. I do so hope it was Daniel. I love and miss him so.









After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure. ~J.K. Rowling

Dreams in the Early Hours

I had a strange dream last night, and I am not sure exactly what it means. I dreamt that my husband and I had bought a large family home that had been repossessed and was on large acreage. This is not something we would do, as we have built our own farmhouse and don't have specific plans to leave here. In the dream though, the house we bought had been repossessed from a large homeschooling family with eight children. They left quickly, as evidenced by tons of soft toys, dolls, dollsclothes, books, workbooks and knick-knacks everywhere. Then the home sat empty for a year while the bank had fruitlessly tried to sell it. In the dream, we bought it for very little money, and for cash in a desperately sick US economy. Although a bargain, and not an old home, it needed a great deal of cleaning, some repair, and interior painting.
In the dream, our other children were staying with friends and completing activities and school, while Daniel was with us. My husband cleaned the large master bedroom suite first,and Daniel would be staying with us in our room for a couple of days, on a large mattress made up as a bed there, so that the dust and mess would not aggravate any asthma. I got the impression that in the dream, he was about eight years old or so.
Everything in the house was locked or had unusual keys. We had not received an actual key to the house, and had been entering through a window. We had waited to call a locksmith because we believed that we would eventually find a cache of spare keys, which we eventually did. In the basement, we also found a Liberty Safe locked tightly. As we cleaned, we decided that we wanted to return all the personal possessions to the family who had lived there before. There was nothing extremely valuable that we knew of, but much of it was the type of thing that would have been important memories for the people who had made them. There were lots of hand knitted and hand crocheted clothes for bears and dolls. We decided to clean and box all the personal stuff, and try to return it all the the prior owners. I was wheezy as I cleaned out everything and put things away.
I remember feeling happy because Daniel was with us, and our other children were safe, but I was sad that another family had lost the home they had loved and had had such a high mortgage on. The more I cleaned, the more sorry I felt for them.
At that moment workers arrived to help us paint the interior of the house. They came from the area of the house. When I asked them whether they knew where the family had gone,and they said, "Down South". I told them I wanted to return their personal possessions. They told me they had never been heard from again. We resolved to keep their things in the attic for them.
I awoke to the knowledge that Daniel is not with us, in the flesh anymore, and certainly would not be around eight years old, even if he were. I was glad that my sorrow concerning a family I had never met was not real. I realized though, that if they were all together and all alive, then they were in fact more fortunate than we are just now, having Daniel away from us. I did enjoy happily tucking Daniel in, as we did when he was about that age.
I don't know if the dream acknowledges many financial losses which are occuring to families all over the US, or whether Daniel, in dreams, finds ways of spending time with us both. Oddly, my husband dreamt about him also last night also. In my husband's dream, Daniel was sitting in a high chair talking to us.
It's hard to know sometimes, what is a tired brain talking, and what is prophetic in some way.
_____

Incidentally, the house pictured above is not the house in the dream, but the picture represents well the "nook and cranny" nature and feel of house that was in my dream.
______

An Anniversary

I did not sleep well last night. This morning, in about a half an hour, it will be exactly two years since you Daniel, walked into the bathroom, and your soul was called by God. We heard you fall, and we ran in and started immediate CPR. By the time the sheriff's office arrived and then the med-evac helicopter, I knew your body had not responded, and that you were gone from Earth. I stayed calm only because you needed my best that day, but I wanted to go with you. In the days that followed I did my best for your dad and for Stephanie, Adam and Matthew, but it was unquestionably the hardest actions and time I can recall, even with God close by that day.
I know that Heaven exceeds everything I ever told you about it. I know you are safe and that you are with my Dad, and that you can see our other relatives who passed before us. We all still miss you immensely.
Last night I had a dream that a package filled with my favorite Cadbury's chocolate arrived in the mail, but with the return address missing. The letter inside from the postal service said it had been "lost for an undetermined period of time". I opened it, and all of the chocolate wrapped animals, Father Christmases, umbrellas etc. were perfect. I thought that one of you had sent this to me before you passed, but the chocolate could not have been perfect. In the dream, I realized that this had been one more reminder that you, Dad, and all the ancestors look down on us and do care, as God does, for our trials, tribulations and sadness, as we attempt to navigate in an increasingly uncertain and bizarre world. I suppose sometimes I pretend I do not need your encouragements, but you, your messages and the messages from others are welcome anytime. We know we are not here alone.
We all, love you wider than the oceans,and deeper than the seas.