There was a family that lived in the hollow of a mountain. Water flowed through the hollow but pooled in front of their home. The home was simple at times, otherwise decrepit. It smelt like dust and burnt wood. There were four children. An angry oldest child (13) who was sometimes a 'bully' and sometimes a 'trouble-maker', two younger boys (10 and 8) and a girl (6). There was a thin mother in a worn cotton dress that came down to her mid-calf. And then there was the father, an abusive man who I mostly only saw from afar. He was normally working or drinking.
In this dream, my conscious took turns inhabiting different bodies. In most dreams I observe scenes like a puppeteer. Hovering. Meddling. In this dream, I literally saw through the eyes of the different people I embodied. For example, when I was the six year old girl, I was walking behind my mom on a hill and noticed the bruises on her legs as the dress lifted with each step. My imagination met my eye level. I remember thinking how pretty the shapes of the bruises were, but how I didn't like something about them. Maybe the color. My imagination met my age level.
Most of the dream were scenes with overly simplistic plot, but deep emotion. I remember being the "thirteen year old bully", and sitting on the porch with the dad while it was raining. I remember these mixed emotions of fear and joy. I was anxious to be that close to the man, but exuberantly happy that he allowed me that close. In that mix of emotions, I became overly anxious about the rain flooding the house, the splash back from the porch dampening my clothes, and the noises of my siblings inside and how each overheard word made my father shift in his seat. I wanted to run in and 'pound some sense' into my siblings. I remember so much detail. The smell of the rain. The fog over the water. The sound of the man's weight on the chair as he rocked back and forth on the rotting floor boards. How his uneven whiskers moved as he smoked his pipe.
In a more dramatic scene, I remember being the ten year old boy and hearing my six year old sister scream, so I ran to the water and saw that my older brother was motionless at the bottom, caught in some seaweed or trash or something. So I dove in to try and pull him up, but I was too scared, and began frantically swimming towards the top. I saw my mom running towards the water, and I felt shame at not having my brother with me. She came splashing into the water, and became hysterical. I was afraid she would drown, and so I tried to pull her to shore, but I was so small compared to her, and she was treading water, holding me tightly. Later I dreamt the same scene, except I was the mother, horrified that I had lost my son. I swam out and saw that there was a rope around his neck, and realized that my husband had done this. I transitioned from this fear that I had lost my son, to this even deeper fear that immobilized me, and I clung to my ten-year-old. The dream was so strange, because when I was the ten year old, I saw something around my brothers neck, but assumed it was accidental. Any guilt or blame was on me. When I was the mother, I put things together differently.
What really struck me about this dream was that, every now and then, I was myself as a social worker, 'assessing' the family. After being several of the children, and after being the mother, suddenly I was coming to realizations like, "Mother is borderline MR...". Also, when I was the children, I felt scared, hungry, angry, cold, anxious, but never embarrassed. But suddenly when a child welfare worker was there, I remember being conscious that I was covered in dirt or poorly dressed. I remember feeling stupid, and worse, that my mom was stupid. And sometimes, depending on the child, I began to hate my mom.
I was the social worker, but not any more than I was the mom or the six year old. And yet, as the social worker, after having 'lived' as the mother and her children, I thought about how best to break up the sibling group in foster care placement. I was the social worker, not any more than I was the mom or the six year old, but as the social worker I detached and used the power inherent in my role, but without understanding those involved as I obviously had the ability to do. I was the social worker, not any more than I was the mom, but I didn't share my power. I had my own idea of what was best for the family, forgetting that I was the mom.
