Saturday, March 6, 2010

What does a house mean?

This week has been all about the house - painting, cleaning, tossing, showing, remembering, enjoying my remaining time here. I think houses have more meaning for women, that they are not just places to put our stuff, but are more like exterior wrappings for the persons we are. We played house when we were little, and when I piddle and organize, I sometimes feel that I am still at play with my toys.

Most of my recurring dreams are of houses. In one in particular, when we (because I am always with someone) walk down a back staircase, we are surprised to find a huge unused and unending area with many beautiful, fully furnished rooms, and I feel that I want to offer them to people. Another dream is that I live in a house with an unending length of rooms, and as I walk down the halls and look into the rooms - bedrooms some with people sleeping in the beds and bathrooms that get messier as I go along - I realize I cannot keep them all clean. One dream reminds me of a previous home but with rooms that are filled with fine, heavily handcrafted antique furniture, and I am trying to choose which pieces to keep. Many dreams take me back to houses I have lived in, which is probably true for all of us. This week I dreamed of a house I had been away from for a long time, and on my return, in the water filled basement, was my old dog Bonnie, moldy but still her sweet and happy self . . . but that is getting me off to dreams of my sweet old pets.

Even in the current society when more household duties are reportedly shared, women are primary breadwinners, and full time dads tend to the children, I think it is still the nature of a woman to identify with her home, or in the absence of time to do so, desire to make it a special place for herself and her family.

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