The Broken Promise
When my three brothers and I were children in the city of Norfolk, Virginia, in the ‘50s and early ‘60s, Mama always promised that everything would be perfect when we moved from the city to the farm. She claimed we would be so happy. Mama frequently spoke to us about her happy childhood living on a tobacco farm in Wilson County, North Carolina, with her parents and five brothers. She wrote several memoirs. Two were published in local history books: one in Black Creek: The First One Hundred Years and one in History of Wilson County. Her dream was to buy a tobacco farm there herself and return to her home and that happy life. She fulfilled her dream, but it did not result in the happiness that she promised. Our family violence and dysfunction continued for the rest of our lives. I am the only one of my immediate family who survived what I have begun to call “Carolina Soap Opera.”
Morning Pages: A Dream of Twelve Sweetpotatoes
March 4, 1997
Dream – February 26, 1997
Farmland: A farmer talking about his 12 children. He shows them to me. They are sweetpotatoes. Each of them is diseased – a black fungus on the inside.
My therapist Lee Hayes helped me through an interpretation of this dream yesterday. What an experience! I don’t know that I can even come close to describing it here. My work on dreams with a previous therapist was never so probing, in-depth, or fruitful. Lee had me become each thing in the dream, one at a time.
She asked me to describe what I saw, felt, and understood, beginning with becoming the farm. Once I had worked that view to its conclusion, Lee had me become the farmer with the same tasking, and then the sweetpotato. Finally, she had me become the dreamer again to see my perspective of the whole scene. It was compelling. I was amazed at what we revealed in that short but symbolic dream. This entire interpretation took about 30 minutes, I would guess.
As the farm, I saw death, dead bodies everywhere – in my soil, in the farmhouse. This farm view greatly surprised me. I was angry and disappointed – my soil was rich and meant to be nurturing, but all it had was blighted fruit and dead bodies. The hope and promise of life had only produced death. And, as the farm, I knew I was going to die too – neglected, treated inappropriately, and I was going to die. I was despondent.
As the farmer, I was upset that the sweetpotatoes were all blighted. Felt I didn’t know what I was doing. I was supposed to know how to raise vegetables; after all, I was a farmer. But I was inept and had screwed it up. I also knew that my farm wife would be angry with me, and I needed some of the sweetpotatoes to be okay. I was opening one after another, frantically searching for one that was okay. As I looked around at the farmland, it was a barren wasteland. I was anxious and upset.
As the sweetpotato, I had more difficulty describing what I saw and felt. I looked perfect on the outside but ruined on the inside. I had not received care. I was in a basket left in the sun. I no longer thrived in the nurturing soil, and instead of being put in a cool, dark place where I could remain whole, the hot sun had turned my insides to dust. I was angry with the farmer for being stupid and uncaring.
At that point, Lee asked me why there were 12 sweetpotatoes, and I did not know the answer. She said she thought it was significant.
As the dreamer looking back on the whole, the dream reminded me of my mother’s goal of returning to the farm. The whole time we were growing up in the city, she promised that everything would be better, okay, when we finally moved back to the farm. That was going to solve all our problems, all our unhappiness. The reality is, it didn’t change anything. It just became the graveyard to all the people who lived there.
Last night, I tried to figure out what the number 12 in the dream could represent, and I stumbled upon the answer. Twelve is the number of people, other than me, who lived on our farm, many of whom have died (not all literally, but certainly some figuratively). 1. Daddy, 2. Mama. Plus my three brothers and their families: 3. Albert, 4. Albert’s wife, 5. Albert’s daughter, 6. Johnny, 7. Johnny’s wife, 8. Johnny’s son, 9. Johnny’s daughter, 10. Paul, 11. Paul’s wife, 12. Paul’s son. It blows me away.
Now I realize that when I experience a loss, I re-experience the losses on the farm.; all 12 of them. No wonder I have such a hard time with losses. I am carrying around a tremendous burden of grief and, somehow, guilt. Am I going to be able to let that go? Can I heal that blight in my core? Is taking an antidepressant the answer? Or is it letting go of the responsibility for it all? Perhaps that is the solution.
My codependency keeps me feeling responsible for the failure of the farm to bring us happiness and the loss of all of those lives. I had no control over that. All I could do was save myself. I could not save the others; they had to protect themselves. Some of them chose not to do that. I have to gain acceptance of that. And that is what will heal me.
