Mom and I take a trip to the nursery

I was with my mom at a nursery, and we had gone to the cashier but there was a bit of a line. I looked down and saw that I had gotten a clump of unripened raspberries caught in the laces of my shoe. On second look, I saw that one of the berries seemed to be ripe, so I plucked it off and offered it to my mom. There were more that were ripe if I tipped the bunch back, and I ended up shooing a few bugs away as I did so.

There was a teeny spider on my hand, and I shook my hand a bit and it ended up jumping or getting flung to this standing display or wall or something. I said something like thanks little guy, you looked a bit shiny? I meant that he looked like his bite would pack a little wallop. He was little, golden and the abdomen looked a bit transparent, like he was full of liquid. He didn’t look like a spider I’ve regularly seen.

I think I might have set the raspberry on my mom’s shoulder to get it to her and still have time to shake off the spider. Later in the dream, I was in the produce section of Wal-Mart or Meijer, and I was wearing a red shirt and black pants as if I worked at Meijer. I kept catching glimpses of myself in the mirror and I thought that I was becoming like my mother, and I tried to figure out how I felt about that.

It’s something I’ve always railed against, in that it used to seem to me like my mom didn’t “do much” with her life, in that she’s lived in Saginaw/Zilwaukee her whole life, and while she did take a few college level courses, she didn’t continue with it. And now she’s been working at Meijer, unloading trucks for the last ten years. But it’s enough to do what she’s been doing. It’s enough to have plants and gardens and chickens and ducks and cats and parakeets and guinea pigs, and she doesn’t want to have to work more just so she can have more money. She’d like to win the lottery, but her time is more important to her than money.

And really, I’ve realized that I’m the same way. Working for money has always been something that I just don’t click with. Anytime I’ve worked, I’ve ended up rather enjoying my job (except working at the grill in the mornings) because it gave me time to think and laugh and practice something. True, if I wasn’t being paid I wouldn’t have volunteered for those things, but money wasn’t the only thing I got out of them.

I think the raspberries are kind of like how my mom lives. She has all these things she wishes to do, but she has to wait to do them all, saving up and waiting until her time is ripe. And it’s kind of like me too, except I’m not saving up to do the things I’d like to do. I’m just waiting in a way because it always feels like something big is coming. It doesn’t mean I’m not doing things in the meantime, though.