Phenergan’s Wake
I’ve had an ill-behaving stomach, as of late.
Which has kept me up at nights, uneasy and nauseous. I couldn’t eat much of anything yesterday; I had to practically force myself to eat the leftover cheese sticks, a bowl of soup, and half a chocolate bar (with hazelnuts).
So, I did.
But, I couldn’t bear to go another night with fitful sleep; so last night, to combat this, I took a Phenergan. It’s a pill prescribed for upset stomachs, etc. We fear I might have IBS. (That’s quite a conversation-starter, there, is it not?)
It took a couple of hours, but it did the trick: it settled my stomach enough and made me drowsy enough to fall asleep and stay that way through most of the night. Though I fell asleep on the couch and as is the usual piper’s fee for that, I woke up with aching hips.
I also fell asleep with the heating pad on, which, the warning tag clearly indicates, is a no-no.
And the dream I had? Well…it was perfectly Joyce-ian, ironically comic and lengthy. As most of my dreams tend to be. I was, it seems, in my own version of Finnegans Wake, one that I am rightfully going to call, Phenergan’s Wake.
I swear that pun came to me just now.
(And I don’t care if you don’t believe me).
Here’s the dream, in two parts.
PART A: “Keep it down, out there, I’m trying to drink my shower!”
I’m the age I am now, but I’m back in my hometown, and I’m running late to church. I’m supposed to help Nana with the dinner, the setup, etc.
We often would eat dinner at the church, especially if it’s during Revival.
Nana has opted to cook for everyone in the church, by herself, and I have been given the task of setting the tables. Because it is a revival, we have invited everyone in the world. I am responsible for setting what appears to be 1,000 tables. All of which require linens and freeze-dried, hand-painted rose petals.
I have overslept. The only recourse to this is to grab my clothes, which were in the microwave, warming, and to shower at the church.
So, this is what I do.
The shower at the church (a shower which does not exist in real life) is located at the back of the old Fellowship Hall, by the nursery. It is a very tiny shower. And though my body is completely covered by the small shower curtains, my head is not and I am able to talk to all the people who walk by, on their way to the new Fellowship Hall where dinner will be served.
Except, I’m not talking to these people.
I’m yelling at them to “keep it down!” I’m angry at them. They keep asking me to do things, to explain things, to answer questions. I want them to hush because I’m trying to not only take a shower, but to drink it as well from a plastic cup that appeared out of nowhere (and yet that didn’t seem odd because doesn’t everyone take a plastic cup to the shower with them?) because I realized while bathing that I was bathing in holy water.
Which, for the record, has never seen the light of day in a Baptist church.
I somehow put it together that I’m not really in a bathroom, per se, but I’m in a secondary type of Baptistery. I’m showering in a spare, if you will, in case the actual Baptistery in the sanctuary was to break.
I realize I’m shouting to distract the people, the congregation, from noticing that I’m sacrilegiously cleaning myself…with holy water that has found its way in from some Catholic tributary.
They don’t seem to notice, though, or they don’t care…either way, the big problem hasn’t occurred to me yet.
When I’m finished, it hits me: I don’t have a towel.
[NOTE: I wake up in here, somewhere, and go to the bathroom. In a rare event, when I return to the couch, as opposed to my bed because I do not think clearly at night, I continue with the same dream].
PART B: “The turkey isn’t done until the vest matches Diane’s earrings.”
We’re now in the new Fellowship Hall. All the tables are set with linens, rose petals, water glasses, forks. Everyone is in line, and they’re all very excited to eat. It’s as if they’ve not eaten in days.
And they haven’t.
I see a clock on the wall that tells me we’ve been at church for four days. Four solid days. (Of course, some revivals have been known to last even longer – though they allow you time to eat in between sermons).
Nana has truly outdone herself, here. She’s cooked everything known to man: dressing, meatloaf, fried chicken, pies, creamed corn, and for the pièce de résistance, a mammoth turkey.
It’s easily the size of a Tercel.
And it’s wearing a thick, wool vest, stark white…with three marbles for buttons.
She looks at the vest and then shakes her head. She puts it back in the oven, which is sitting above the sink. As a matter of fact, the knob that turns on the hot water, also sets the temperature for the oven.
Everyone groans. They’re very hungry, and she’s not letting anyone fix their plate until the turkey’s done.
“You know the rule.” She says, “The turkey’s not done until its vest matches Diane’s earrings.”
Diane apologizes. She hasn’t worn any earrings today.
[And this is where I woke up].
It’s the first dream I’ve had in a long time that I fully remembered the following morning. I’m not saying that Phenergan is the answer to my restless eyes; I have no desire to be a substance abuser…again.
Though the last time I abused any substance to the point of becoming problematic I was ten and the substance was mashed potatoes, insofar as that counts as a substance.
I loved mashed potatoes. (Potatoes in general, really). And once when I was ten, I ate so many that I vomited. Right there at the Sunday dinner table, in front of Nana.
That’s what I thought, at least, that it was the fault of the mashed potatoes.
The truth was that I was in the process of getting the stomach flu. As you might imagine I assumed it was due to the excessive influx of mashed potatoes I’d consumed that caused the illness. The doctor assured me it was not the mashed potatoes.
I think in lieu of a traditional upbringing, rooted as such in the normal definition of a family with a Father, Mother, and 2.5 children, that familial love was sublimated by food and food preparation. I think it’s the reason for my love/hate relationship with cooking to this day.
Or, maybe I was just an ignorant, greedy child.
I couldn’t look at a potato for months without blushing.
***
Though, as you know, that is certainly not the case today.
Not with potatoes…and not, I pray, with the Phenergan.
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