The Baby, and Animals In The Closet

On Friday, April 9th, 2010 I experienced a dream about a baby. In the dream this baby was another woman's child but I recognized him as my son. I knew this baby was my child but I also knew he wasn't my child. Confusing, I know. His Mother was a woman I knew well but I don’t recall her name. The baby’s father was the biological father of my own son. In this dream I was caring for the baby because the mother was going somewhere and couldn’t bring the baby with her. She left to go wherever it was she had to go – alone but the baby’s father was sleeping in the bedroom. As I was changing the baby’s diaper I was talking to him. It was a running commentary on what I was doing. When I was done I picked him up and cuddled him as he drifted off to sleep. I placed him in one of two empty cribs that were in the parent's bedroom so he could take a nap. 

The family lived in my Grandmother's old apartment on Maitland Street. The 

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 apartment I remember from my childhood but not the last apartment she lived in before she died in 2003. I walked through their apartment; starting in the parent's bedroom through the living room, past another bedroom and into a spare bedroom which was our play room at Grandma's when we were children. The room was void of our toys and instead had two changing tables of different styles, a bassinet and bags of baby clothes, diapers and other baby items. It had numerous light switches on the walls not in an unusual way but each wall had a light switch though none of them would turn on the overhead light.

I remember thinking "Oh yeah. The electricity doesn't work in this room. How are we going to get that fixed now that the landlord has died?" 

I walked across the room to the closet and opened the door to peer inside. The apartment was on the third floor but when my Grandmother lived there she was on second. Inside the closet on the floor were stuffed animals set up in a circle. I knew that I had done it. I said, "Well, we can run an extension cord from the other room into this one so that we will have electricity in here."

I noticed that the overhead light had turned on but as soon as I noticed – it went out. The closet was cold. At this point I realized that I wasn't fully asleep nor was I fully awake.

I was cold because our bedroom window was open.

I peered into the closet and saw a vent. The closet looked and felt more like an attic than a closet and the vent was that like the ones I’ve seen in attics with no windows. I was about to step into the closet / attic when I heard my name called over my left shoulder.

I felt uneasy.

I knew it wasn't my husband who had called my name. He was sleeping beside me in bed. It wasn't the voice of either my son or daughter who were sleeping in their own rooms. It was a woman's voice.

I looked over my shoulder but no one was there. But I instructively knew I wouldn’t see anyone. As I was about to step into the attic / closet I thought "Grandma?"

 … as my alarm went off. 

But I knew that voice wasn't Grandma’s.