I dreamed I lived in my childhood home, but instead of being in the Hill Country, it floated around New Orleans. Sometimes it was at the foot of the Causeway, sometimes the Quarter, sometimes Midcity. I lived there with a few friends, my family, and some other people, and my family didn't own it. We worked for the people who did. Sometimes the house was parked next to the hotel the family owned and ran, and we'd all go help clean the hotel rooms or mow the lawn. The hotel was on a sloping, grassy bank along a stream, beside the Causeway bridge. There was a stretch of the bridge that was elevated, just before the lake, where access roads ran beneath. The stop light situation was very confusing.
My boss was a sort of governess who taught children in the household. I was in my room, puzzling over a word game my mom had been working on, but hadn't finished. The first word was "marpee" and the second word was "sharpee". There were blanks for a third word, and there were clues. The clue for the first word was that it was the name of a famous Indian nursemaid from some novel. Mom said Momo had told her what that was. Each successive word was supposed to be no more than three letters different from the one before. The second clue was a picture of a magic marker. The third clue was "Where baby comes from."
The governess saw me pondering this, and decided I must not know how to read. She very kindly offered to teach me to read and write. There was a housemaid who actually didn't know how to read and write, but was ashamed to admit it, so I agreed to take lessons, because I thought then I would know how to teach her. But when I found my first lesson was to memorize the shapes and sounds of the first five letters of the alphabet, I realized I couldn't keep up that sort of act, and came clean. I reminded my boss that she'd hired me as a writer, and that I had been reading and writing at the college level since middle school. I explained why I hadn't said so sooner, and she agreed to teach the other girl.
Every day I went to work downtown, and walked home to wherever our house was. Routinely, one of my friends' five children would just appear by my side, and I'd take care of him until I met up with the family, which would always happen an hour or so later. Sometimes it would be one child, but then that one would wink out and another would show up. They were all blond-haired, blue-eyed little boys. The oldest was about ten, the youngest two. I was minding the two-year-old and he wet my bed, then ran off down the street mid-diaper change. Fortunately, he turned into the five-year-old before he got too far, and came trotting back.
While I was chasing him down the street, I figured out the word game. The second word was supposed to be "marker", not "sharpee", and the last word was "mother". I found my mom and told her about it, and she asked me if I was going with her and my sister on their trip to Ohio. I explained that I had agreed to spend Mardi Gras with a friend of mine, so I couldn't.
We were watching a football game, and one of the teams was Ammansville University. Their colors were orange and white, and their helmets were white with an orange stripe along the top from front to back, and an orange leopard on the sides. I asked where Ammansville was, because the only one I knew was in Texas, and THAT one did NOT have a university anywhere near it. Mom reminded me that it was Ammansville, Ohio, and that's why they were visiting Ohio, because my sister was thinking of transferring to the university there.
I agreed to drive with them on the first leg, which was just up through Texas. We stopped at the Halloween fair in Ammansville, TX, to get something to eat and say hello to friends and family in the area. My sister wanted Mom to buy her a tea cup that had a blue gingham pattern, with Peter Rabbit on it, and started crying when Mom said no. I asked her if she was or wasn't a college-aged young woman, throwing a tantrum because our mother wouldn't buy her a tea cup. And then I woke up.
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