I Thought I Dreamt You

For ten years I was part of the Jewish Artists’ Lab, using Jewish and secular text to explore themes through artwork. After a lapse, it has resumed in a slightly different form through the Jewish Artists’ Collective (JAC), a collaborative project sponsored by a number of Jewish organizations in the Twin Cities. We begin the year with a topic that we explore in discussion which becomes the creative engine for artwork in a group show. The theme this year is Dreams, a theme that I struggled with for I seldom remember my dreams anymore. In sorting through old files, I ran across dreams I had documented from the 1980s that were incredibly vivid. Now a dream is a rarity, save for an occasional vague image or feeling that remains. As I have a limited portfolio from which to choose, I began to consider powerful dreams of the past that stayed with me and arrived at one which I’ve begun to work with. Of course, it has a backstory that is important in understanding what I am trying to capture.

In my mother’s final years, I began to drive down to see her for a week at a time, tag teaming with my sister who lived an hour away and came in each week. For me it was 500 miles away, an eight-hour drive that I had begun to get accustomed to, even finding the solitude satisfying.

 

I had driven down the day before and now slept soundly in my childhood bed, a twin bed in a room that I had shared with my sister growing up. Above me was a picture of myself as a somber toddler, wearing a dress that my grandfather had made. Behind me was a headboard, white spattered with gold specks. 

 

My parents had lived in that house for sixty years, deeply rooted to their home and community. Now my mother lived alone. She was losing memory, no longer able to continue her voracious reading as she lost the thread of a story. I had taken her to Israel the year prior, something she had always wanted to do. I’m not sure that she remembered much, but in the moment she did. We lived in the moment now. She was someone who I admired, even in this more difficult state. Each morning, she created collages because it gave her life purpose. “Everyone does something,” she once told me, “This is what I do.”

 

I was still slumbering but gradually awakening when the bedroom door opened a crack. My mother peeked in, and her face filled with delight as she exclaimed. “You’re here! I thought I had dreamt you.” 

 

I think now of her as existing in that time within the liminal space between our world and whatever comes next. I am often drawn to liminal imagery, the space between, which is in fact very much what a dream is. I also believe there are times when we are especially sensitive to being in an in-between state as I believe my mother was for those months prior.

 

I called her each morning and on one call she had told me that she had fallen asleep in her chair and woken to a place she didn’t recognize. It was her home, but it wasn’t her home. It had distressed her, and I wasn’t sure what I could offer her. “Life is getting harder for you,” I said, acknowledging this reality.

 

“Yes, it is,” she replied. Then she added a plea, “Hold me.”

“I’ll always hold you close,” I said, tearing up as I reached across 500 miles, practice for the lengthier distance that loomed. 

 

My mother died two months later. After her death, I wondered if she would come to me in a dream. Months went by and nothing happened. Then one night I dreamt I was sleeping in my childhood bed. I could hear my mother’s flip flops as she walked down the hall. A sense of peace filled me. There was nothing more comforting than knowing that my mother was nearby. I awoke in my own bed in Minnesota, my mother clearly not present. I had in fact dreamt her.

 

In JAC we were told to analyze the components of our dreams. I dust off this treasured memory and think of our discussion on making a dream manifest, bringing it to life. I didn’t see her in this dream, I heard her, a familiar noise that instantly translated into a sense of peace. Sound and feeling, but no interaction or communication. It was a sparse dream, but a rich one all the same.

I Thought I Dreamt You

What I love about this story is the juxtaposition of the two stories. What she thought was a dream turned out to be reality, my seeming reality turned out to be a dream. Mirror images, a play on liminal space. But how to paint it? I’ve been doing more abstract or nature-based imagery, but I couldn’t figure out how to tell this story without figural drawings. So, I started with a painting of my mother looking into a room in which I slept. How do I paint the sound of footsteps? I set that aside and remembered the headboard of my childhood bed with its specks of gold. I decided to create a suggestion of that and began tearing small pieces of gold from a foil wrapper. I stuck each one into medium where the headboard would have stood. They reminded me of music, dancing overhead. It dawned on me that they could connect me to the sound of her steps. I painted footsteps and then placed specks of gold between those footsteps leading to my ear. I collaged papers into the bedsheets that wrapped around me, forming roots below in the home in which my roots grew. Veils obscure parts of the footsteps, creating that liminal space that separated us. A painting evolves in an iterative way. What I don’t know is if this is the beginning or an end. I am considering if I could take some of the imagery which emerged and work with it in a more abstract way, perhaps playing with mirrored images, the suggestion of sound and footsteps.

If there was a resolution or meaning from this dream, looking back ten years later, I feel my mother’s presence and continue to hold her close. Perhaps she does the same with me.

Favorite Books: History and Human Experience

This blog post has become a bit of a tradition for me. This is the fifteenth year that I have written about the books that I especially enjoyed in the prior year of reading. I frequently go back to fondly remember the details of a particular book or when I read it. When I describe my reading, I usually look for the common themes and often they are quite clear. I am drawn to historical themes and several of these fall within that category, but perhaps the overriding theme is that of the human experience.  How do individuals respond to the challenges that life presents? What actions do they take, both in outward action, but also on an emotional level? Here are some of my favorites from the past year.

When Time Stopped by Ariana Neuman

Have you ever been to the Pinkas synagogue in Prague? There you will find the names of Holocaust victims written on the walls. When the author of this book first visited the synagogue, she was shocked to discover her father’s name. Where normally there would have been a death date, she saw only a question mark. This sets the stage for what is a book of discovery of what exactly that question mark embodied. Raised in a privileged family as a child in Venezuela, Ariana was the daughter of a man who had become a wealthy industrialist. And yet he harbored secrets. As a child, Ariana formed a detective club and was drawn to secrets, stumbling across clues about her father that everything was not as it appeared.  

 

It was only upon her father’s death that she was gifted a pile of clues from him from which she reconstructs the amazing story of his life during the Holocaust, living in the heart of Berlin under a forged identity. She learns of the Jewish grandparents she never knew and conjures them to life through her discoveries of their life in Prague and later in their letters exchanged with family while they were held in Terezin. A talented author and a dogged researcher, she has created a rich memoir and brings us along on the journey of her search. 

 

 

James by Percival Everett 

James is a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the perspective of the runaway slave Jim, referred to as James in this telling, who is often a father figure to Huck.  Together, they travel down the Mississippi in flight. James because he learned he was to be sold away from his wife and child, while Huck is fleeing his drunk and abusive father. If there is a theme to this book, it is that things are not what they appear to be. Our first hint of the differences arises with an example of code switching that James teaches the children, or what he refers to as “correct, incorrect grammar.” It is the vernacular of “black-speak” designed to play to stereotypes, to hide in plain sight and preserve one’s safety.  He switches into perfect English when among other slaves. The few times he lets a white hear him speak in that manner, it strikes fear in the listener, shattering the world as they knew it. Appearance too does not always reveal race, a black man appears white and in one story James joins a band of white musicians and performs in a minstrel show in black face, made up to appear as if he is white. A thought-provoking book with an unusual framing.

 

 

Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo

This is a story of both slavery and escape, a true story based on the lives of Ellen and William Craft. Each experienced separation from loved family members as the cruelty of slavery divided families with no consideration of family ties. It was from this experience that they resolved to escape, to remain together and create a family that could not be sundered. Ellen, the daughter of her mother’s master, appeared to be white and they cleverly played upon this by assigning her the role of a young master suffering from illness while her husband assumed the role of her personal slave and attendant. They had some unique obstacles. Ellen had never learned how to write her name, so they bandaged her hand to avoid situations where she would need to sign travel documents. As Ellen had served as a slave to her half-sister, she had opportunity to observe how young men of wealth carried themselves, useful information as she crossed both racial and gender lines. Upon their successful arrival in the North, they joined the antislavery lecture circuit. They soon had to contend with the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850 which could have resulted in them being sent back but evaded it and ultimately moved to Great Britain where William continued with the lecture circuit, and they raised a family. This is a dramatic story of escape and the people who became an important part of the anti-slavery efforts.

 

Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout

This book brings together many of the characters from Strout’s earlier books, Olive Kitteridge, the Burgess Boys and Lucy Barton. Bob Burgess is falling in love with Lucy, drawn in by the intimacy of being truly known on their regular walks. Meanwhile he navigates his marriage to Margaret where he often feels unknown. Olive and Lucy share small stories of people they encounter, those with unrecorded lives as they reflect on the meaning of the story or if there is any meaning at all. A murder mystery introduces some new characters and builds bonds between Bob and the young man who he defends, offering a fatherly presence to someone deeply in need of it. The book is a character study filled with well-developed characters living out life’s conundrums with each other, often bringing to them a level of unexpected kindness and insight.

 

The Secret Life of Sunflowers by Marta Molnar

This book is historical fiction, but also based on history. Told as many such novels, it alternates between two braided stories, one modern day fictional story, the other based on history.  What is unusual about this is its subject and her role in art history, the sister-in-law of Vincent Van Gogh, credited with introducing him to the world after his death and that of his brother.  Upon the death of her husband, Theo Van Gogh, Johanna Bonger was left with a young son and hundreds of Vincent's paintings. Her deep commitment to her late husband and her growing appreciation of Vincent's work, led her to move into a role that was quite unusual for a woman of that day as she gradually introduced the world to Van Gogh's work. The modern day story revolves around a young woman whose grandmother has just died and left her with a mystery and a diary. She too is finding her way as a young woman asserting herself in the world. She learns that the diary she received was written by Johanna Bonger. In crafting her story the author drew on the contents of the actual diary, that exists at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam and in digital form as well, having first been released in 2020. While I enjoyed the present day story, I found myself intrigued by this woman who had the drive to carve out such an unexpected life and life's work. 

Doorman Wanted by Glen Miller 

On a lighter note, this book tells the story of the son of a wealthy man who suddenly inherits a fortune upon his father’s death.  Wealth is a world that he has long rejected and as he struggles with this new position in the world, he is sent to a building owned by his late father to sign some documents. Arriving at the building he notes a sign seeking to hire a doorman and in a brief moment of mistaken identity coupled with his hesitance to assume the mantle of wealth, he accepts a job as that doorman. The story develops around his role and relationships as the doorman, a role in which he thrives. His struggle is with how he will be perceived as a wealthy man and treated in a manner that prevents true relationships. This is a first book debut by Glen Miller who crafts a story with wit and heart.