My son David and I are sleeping in a queen-sized bed, as in a motel room. He is under the covers
but I am in a sleeping bag on top of them. I go out to look for the room where the free breakfast
is served. Airborne, I pass over a paved and fenced lot where a dozen or more helicopters of
various shapes, colors and sizes are parked. All of them are missing their rotors. Then I enter a
large warehouse and pick up two motor covers shaped like large suitcases. They are red and on their
sides one is labeled "Case" and the other "Western". I realize I do not want to carry them to the
breakfast room so I leave them in the warehouse, being careful to put them in a place where they
will be found but will not be in the way. Exiting the warehouse into the parking lot, I notice a
parked car with two men in gray suits in the front seat. An elegantly dressed woman steps out of
the back seat then, to my disappointment, gets back in and closes the door before I am able to see
her face. I walk across the parking lot in pouring rain but do not worry too much about getting
wet. Entering a covered area in front of a grocery store, I walk through it into the store itself,
which is crowded with narrow aisles between shelves packed with goods for sale. Two cashier
stations are squeezed into a small space in front of the door. Beside one of the stations steak and
bacon are sizzling in a frying pan on a small stove. The cooking meats smell good but I realize that
they are not part of the free breakfast for the motel. Exiting the store into the covered area out
front I sit down on a pile of flour sacks and begin to eat some leftovers from a plastic container.
Several workers are also sitting around eating their lunches but they finish before me. When they
get up to leave I notice a mosquito buzzing around me, then suddenly I am surrounded by a cloud of
mosquitoes. I get up and go back out into the parking lot where it has stopped raining. I have a
small bottle of 100% DEET repellent so I begin to pour a little bit at a time into my palm to rub it
on to the exposed skin of my neck and arms. I realize I need to do my feet as well.
While I was writing the dream down I began to get an idea of what it might mean. On our last phone
call David and I talked some about what he might want to do with his life, touching on career
options, marriage and family and so forth. I didn't have anything in particular to urge but rather
just wanted to explore some ideas and find out what's on his mind. In this dream, I seem to be
looking back on my own experience of creating a life for myself.
In this interpretation my search for the motel breakfast represents my quest, when I was David's
age, to become an adult with a respectable life, something which I expected of myself but did not
know how to achieve. The helicopters remind me of one of the highlights of my work studying
Peregrine Falcons in Colorado after college - helicopter flights through the mountains searching for
nesting Peregrines. That the helicopters are all grounded may reflect my failure to achieve a
career in field biology. Case Western University includes a medical school; after I gave up on
biological fieldwork I applied to medical school but couldn't convince the admissions people that I
really wanted to become a doctor. When I met Susan (the elegant woman?) I learned to type in order
to get an entry-level job in business (the men in suits). At this point in the dream the meaning
gets vague. Rain may represent sadness, a sense of loss or disappointment incurred in settling for
less then my ideals for myself. I don't have clear associations with the store either but the
cooking meat that wasn't for breakfast probably has something to do with becoming a vegetarian when
I became an Adventist. That preceded my career as a programmer, perhaps represented by eating with
the workers outside the store. Their departure may represent my retiring from that career. I am
pretty sure that the mosquitoes have some association with ALS; I am never more aware of my
disability than when there is a mosquito in my vicinity. In dealing with the mosquitoes (putting on
bug dope) I am out in the parking lot and it is no longer raining. In the end I found breakfast,
even if it was only leftovers, and the rain stopped. In the end, I found a life for myself and
despite coping with ALS, I am not disappointed in it.