It’s not the first time I have dreamed of a baby whose head is disconnected from her body but in this dream my baby was born with a thin line of tissue connecting head and body and at some point this membrane broke and her head was completely separate.  Even so her head continued to live as did her body but I worried about how they might ever come together again.

In my dream I was living in a community consisting of family members from my family of origin and other people from my workplaces over the years.  One of the community health nurses told me I should take special care of my baby and get her to a nearby hospital as soon as possible.

It was hard to wrap up my baby  in such a way as her head might stay attached.  I feared her head might onto the floor.  The nurse helped me swaddle my baby and one of my brothers came by and offered to take us to the hospital.  I did not want his company.  He had grown dissolute over the years and although I felt sorry for him and wanted to help him by letting him help me I wanted to travel alone.

My father appeared in this dream too, or at least a photograph of him dressed as a magistrate and standing before the chair of office in front of a great desk in a legal chamber.  In the dream I asked my mother about the photo and she told me that it had been my father’s greatest desire to become a magistrate and for a short time early in his life he had succeeded.  The picture included a crowd of people seated in the docks and reminded me of the photos I have seen of my mother and father in the registry office in Holland on the day they married by law.

On that day relatives sat in rows behind the registry desk as if in church but the walls of the registry office were unadorned and the large room looked stark and cold.  In my dream the room was more like a huge hall filled with the dark carved wood of old world law chambers and my father looked prouder than I had ever seen him in life.

Somehow in my dream I knew to go outside and look over the country side that surrounded the huge community house in which we lived.  Whether it was a communication from my dislocated baby or from my father I knew it in my bones and went outside as the wind stirred up.  I watched as all the blossom trees of springtime, including the late blooming magnolias, dropped every one of their petals as if a witch had blown a puff of wind at them and they had dropped their all.

It was eerie to see these trees suddenly bare, as if in winter, but I was relieved when I noticed in the distance that it was only our trees nearby that had shed their leaves, as if our home alone had been cursed.  Further down in the valley in the far distance I could still see pink blossom trees as full as a woman’s head covered in glossy curls.