Marriage

I just proposed. In a dream.

I’m only remembering the last part, but I remember that throughout this dream, she was someone I was arguing with quite often — they were good natured arguments. She’s a strong woman, both physically and intellectually, however somewhat slight of frame.

In dreamtime, her hair was varied, from reddish-blond to brunette: never full-red, full-black, or full-blond.

Very patient. Her job had something to do with childcare; I think it was at a day-care. Her personality is very matter-of-fact. She was close friends with another woman she worked with. I know neither of their names (dreams are funny that way).

Most of this dream took place in a smallish town. I’d guess a population of five-to-ten thousand. I can’t remember what my job was, but I do remember it involved my driving a pickup truck. I had the flexibility to visit the daycare during my day – it may have been such that I was making regular deliveries there or to some other business at the same location. It was pretty clear that was visiting this woman and her friend.

At some point, I remember I had laid down for either bed or siesta someplace, and someone had just been critical of a personality flaw — it might have been her who said it. She was pointing out that I was already too blank — too intellectual, too strategic, too something… I’m thinking it was too strategic, my penchant to delay action until I have all the available information — and that if I married someone with the same trait, I would likely doom my children to being complete procrastinators.

This thought was on my mind as I lay down to sleep on some bunk less than comfortable (it must have been a siesta) and I realized what I needed was to marry someone quite the opposite, someone active. Tactical. And in the dream, I realized that it was her.

Time frame being all smeared in dreamtime, it was essentially the next time I saw her, I followed her into a back room as she was gathering supplies. I dropped to both knees at her feet, caught her up in an embrace, and pressed my cheek to her belly. Holding her in this embrace for a moment, I lean away with my arms still around her, looking up to see her eyeing me with a bemused skepticism.

In dreamtime, this scene was re-executed from here several times. She asks, “Are you alright?”, “And this is for…?”, “Where are you going with this?”, and so on. My reply is similar to, “This, THIS is where I run to. When I’m scared. When I need support. When I’m tired. I’ve been running here in my mind for days|months|years. This is where I always want to be”.

At this point her friend quietly enters, and stands off to the side waiting. I realize they’ve been expecting this, perhaps hoping for this, for some time now as I shift from both knees to one knee, letting my arms slip from her torso and instead seeking out and grasping her hands. The intrinsic quality in her gaze shifted from skepticism to hope and encouragement.

“Will you be mine?”, “Will you marry me?”, “Will you be there for me?” and a few other variants.

I don’t remember her saying “yes”, but I also do not remember, “no”. I don’t know if she ever answered, although in dreamtime she apparently said something and I believe it was positive, as the dream progressed along those lines.

A fear of marriage for many is that, “what if I meet someone just like you but better”? Not that “better” is the proper word, but its a fear of commitment for strategic types based in our fear of taking action without all of the facts. It is a fear of mine for everything that I do (at least when I don’t have all the facts).

She and I discussed this. “What if later I feel like I’ve made a mistake?” Matter of factly, but with the compassion I need, she answers, “then we’ll talk about it. And it will be okay”, which is exactly what I need to hear: that I can be forgiven for an apparent strategic mistake, AND that by it being okay, it KEEPS her in the position of being the right choice in the first place.

Essentially, she accepts that I’m not perfect. That fact does make her perfect.

This must have been the point my brain was trying to work through, because around here the dream dynamics change. I’m working from an office in some high rise (it’s a secure building with an attached parking garage shared by 3 other buildings/towers). There’s a penthouse level, which is essentially a ballroom, and then there’s a maintenance floor above the penthouse where the elevator equipment can be accessed, etc. There’s also a couple of rooms that were probably envisioned as equipment storerooms, and: a series of 4 garage-like roll-up doors. All opening to the south.

The door openings are set at two angles, much like the pitch of a gambrel-barn roof.

The dream takes on a television drama quality, with a large cast of players of essentially the same importance. In this drama there’s a woman — one of the office staff — who is living in one of the rooms on the engineering floor. Another one of the rooms is used by a select group of staff as a poker-room, or “hide-out” room, someplace that management is unlikely to come unless they are invited to poker night.

This particular episode centers around the woman being “evicted” from the room by management, while most of the office staff support her staying. Meanwhile she confronts the circumstances which cause her to be living in the room, and after being bitter about the eviction decides later that it really is the best decision even after the staff manage to change management’s mind and ask her to stay.

My role is two-fold. I like this woman, so I want her to stay, and, I discover that bolts and nuts are coming out of one of the garage doors on the roof, and I’m trying to get it fixed before enough come out that the wind can catch it and rip it off, exposing the floor to the high-altitude winds. This involves with my trying to convince maintenance of the importance of their doing this, as in the past they’ve known me to be capable of doing most of my own maintenance — something that I’m glad to do.

After writing all of this, what is jumping out now as most significant (opposed to what I thought might have been when I first woke up) is the fact that this building is one of the existing buildings in my dream world. Before waking, two of the execs were discussing the fact that the building houses two ballistic missiles, in the top 20 floors at opposite corners of the building. The engineering that made this possible was quite intriguing, if impossible, but that’s what dreams are made of.