Later, remaking her bed, as she pulled up first the yellow thermal blanket, then the thin, pale-green quilt, and before pulling up and smoothing the faintly-tinted, cream-colored chenille spread, Kate remembered her dream. She had slept with one “plug” in her right ear, and all night long had almost, but not quite, wakened to news or airwaves chatter – the innocuous talk show – talk, talk, talk, punctuated hourly with news and weather reports of the snow that apparently had been falling all night.
The dream. She smiled. So vivid – the snow piled high behind her car. The garage door had remained up, and snow had intruded steadily, patiently, hour upon hour. But it was only a dream, for this house, unlike the one in which they had raised the children, had no garage. Only a carport.
Any time she remembered her dreams upon waking, she tried to fathom what they were revealing to her. She didn't fully admit it to herself, but she believed in them. Now she pondered the possible meaning of last night's dream. Was it that the snow piled high against her car deprived her of her wheels? Mobility, she thought. It denies me mobility. Without use of my car, what happens to my freedom? Why, it’s nowhere! Yes, that’s the dream's significance. I must insist on my freedom from now on – freedom to do what I want for a change – not cater to the whims of my family! There's not all that much time left ahead of me to do what I want. I must begin now, before it's too late. Yes, that’s the message in the dream.
Then she remembered that in the dream Daisy, their Boston terrier came bounding over the piled snow and into the cold outdoors. Was Daisy, too, in symbolic concept, heralding freedom? Or was she, even in Kate’s subconscious, merely trying to fulfill her canine raison d’etre – that of keeping them, her masters, safe and free of intruders in their yard? Was it to further emphasize the freedom lesson, or merely the dream’s valid portrayal of Daisy’s instinct -- to chase deer and all other manner of threat from the yard, the domain she had been born to keep safe for her masters.
Kate “saw” herself as she was then, in last night's subconscious world – standing outdoors, behind her Toyota, barefoot in the snow. Although in her dream, a chill breath of winter wind fluttered her flannel nightgown, she remembered she had felt no cold.
Nothing had seemed to bother her. She wanted to carry that feeling now into her daily life – no more fretting about everything.
And as for that other one, her sister ... if she wasn't happy in the retirement home, at least there she was safe, and Kate was going to worry about it no longer. The dream seemed to clarify everything. At least for the moment.
Tomorrow might prove to be otherwise.