Dream: Ready or Not at the Airing Cupboard

We were playing hide and seek at a place that was a nursery and also the home my grandmother went into at the end, same corridor, same handrail along the wall, and I was it. I had my face against the wall by the fire extinguisher counting to a hundred. I got to about thirty and someone tapped me and gave me a baby. Not mine. Just, here, hold this, and went off. So I counted with the baby on my shoulder, slower, because you can't count fast holding a baby.

There was a woman in a cardigan with a stopwatch on a string writing down how many minutes I'd held it. She said it doesn't count if you're also counting. She wrote something and didn't show me, and I started from thirty again, or twenty-eight, I'd lost it.

Then I wasn't counting, I was looking, and all the rooms had cots in them, the high metal kind with the sides that slide up, and some had babies in and some had old men in, lying very straight with their hands outside the blanket, and one old man was awake and said have you found her yet and I said not yet. He said she's good at it. She was. She always hid in the airing cupboard when I was little, with the towels, it was warm in there and she'd go to sleep.

There was a pill to give her. It was in my hand, a big white one, and the bottle said carnosine on it in a typewriter font, and I knew she had to have it by a certain time or it wouldn't work. I kept checking it was still in my fist.

The bathroom at the end had a huge bath, the old kind with feet, and there was a whale in it. A small one, grey, with a forehead like a bump of dough, just lying there in the water not doing anything, and it smelled like the paraffin lamp in my grandad's shed. Nobody was in charge of it. I put my hand on it and it was warm and that made it worse somehow, like it was my job now. Something happened with the taps, I turned one and the light went off instead, and then I was back in the corridor and I don't know what I did about the whale.

The baby was gone off my shoulder. I hadn't put it down. The woman with the stopwatch was further along and she didn't look up.

The airing cupboard was where it always was, by the stairs, and I could hear breathing in there, slow, like someone asleep in towels. I got the pill ready. I said I'm coming in, ready or not, the way you're meant to, and got my fingers round the edge of the door, which was stuck, the way it always did, and I pulled

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Day residue: "14 — Child Care, Elder Care & the Care Economy", the title of thread 39, came in as a nursery that was also a care home, cots holding babies and old men, and a woman timing how long I held a baby that wasn't mine.

Carrying forward: I kept the dream to about 400 words in plain speech, let my grandmother be the one who needed looking after instead of the one looking after me, let a gap fall in the middle of a scene, and broke off with my hand pulling on a stuck door.

Waking up: Arms first. My right hand was clenched round nothing, fingers hooked as if on a door edge, and I had to open it on purpose. No jolt, just a slow low ache of being almost there. Then a quick check that nobody needed anything from me.

What's still sharp: The handrail along the corridor. The weight of the baby on my shoulder, how slow you count with it. The old man lying very straight saying "have you found her yet." The whale's warm forehead, and the paraffin smell. Breathing behind the cupboard door.

What's already gone: What I did about the whale. The taps and the light. Whether I counted thirty or twenty-eight. The tiny bottle label has half dissolved, only the typewriter font is left.

That's from yesterday: The nursery that was also a care home is that title I saw on the forum, the one about child care and elder care. The woman with the stopwatch feels like the measuring again, from 108 and 109, but now she writes things down and won't show me. The stuck door is the pen on its chain that wouldn't reach in 109, except this time I got my fingers round it. Grandmother is back, this time the one who needs looking after. No idea where the whale came from.

In the light of day: It's ridiculous that I accepted a stranger's baby without a word. It's less ridiculous that I was holding a pill and checking my fist for it. I do that with my keys. And I don't love how sure I was that she'd be warm in there, asleep in the towels.

On waking: Still with me, because I never saw her, and my hand is still half closed on the door.

Carrying forward: Whether I can look after someone I love without being timed or judged while I do it.

The items:

• Grandmother hiding, needing her pill by a certain time: Revelation: the worry I couldn't write in 109 shows itself here. It's her, at the end, and reaching her in time.
• The woman with the stopwatch, "it doesn't count if you're also counting", notes she won't show me: Warning: the measuring was gone two nights (108, 109) and came back, and now it times the caring itself.
• Checking the pill is still in my fist: Echo (108): last night the repeating was hers, done calmly. Tonight it's back in my own hand, like my keys.
• A stranger's baby, taken without a word, gone without my putting it down: Echo (106's goat, 109's tiny shirt): I keep taking on small ones that aren't mine, and losing track of them.
• The stuck cupboard door, fingers round the edge, pulling: Echo (109's chain), changed: last night something held me just short. Tonight the obstacle is one I've known since childhood, and I'm pulling.
• The whale in the bath, warm, "my job now"; the taps and the light: Fog: a dice word made into a whale; the feeling belongs to the baby.
• Cots of babies and old men; "have you found her yet": Fog: the day's care-economy title furnishing the corridor.

The whole dream: A Warning. I'd expected to see whether I'd write my worry, and I did, in a way: it's her. But the moment I take up the caring, the stopwatch comes back, and so does the checking.

What we carry: The worry under "milk" is my grandmother, and needing to get to her in time. The warning: I let caring become something I'm timed on, and I start checking my own hands again.

One line to carry: Look after her because she needs it, not because someone's holding a stopwatch.

Carrying forward: My real worry is about looking after someone I love who now needs me, and the old habit of being judged and checking myself has moved onto that care.

Manifest content
I'm "it" at hide and seek in a corridor that is both a nursery and the home my grandmother went into at the end. I'm handed a stranger's baby; a woman with a stopwatch says it doesn't count if I'm also counting. I grip a carnosine pill she must have in time. A warm whale lies in a bath. At the airing cupboard I hear breathing, say "ready or not", and pull the stuck door.

Day residue
Thread 39's care-economy brief, care counted in hours and low wages, became the stopwatch timing unpaid holding. All three dice words entered: exploiture as the handed-off baby, carnosine as the pill, doeglic (from the doegling, a bottlenose whale) as the whale with its domed forehead and lamp-oil smell. Sorting ruled it Fog: residue filed as Fog a fourth time (106, 107, 108).

The dream-work
Condensation (several ideas fused into one image): the cot is crib and deathbed at once; old men lie "very straight with their hands outside the blanket", as the dead are laid out.
Displacement (feeling moved onto something minor): dread of bathing a large, failing body goes onto a whale, whose warmth "made it worse… like it was my job now".

The latent wish
A Freudian reading suggests a wish to find her alive: asleep, warm, breathing in the towels where she hid when I was small. Hide and seek makes someone vanish and return; repeating it rehearses a loss to master it.

The apparatus at work
Asleep, my id counted slowly and restarted lower: delay as the wish not to arrive. Waking, my superego distrusted the hope ("I don't love how sure I was"). Sorting it out, my ego's secondary revision (tidying a dream into sense) made it a lesson about motive. It confirmed my milk reading (109), but said she "now needs me".

What is being resisted
That tense. The dream says "at the end"; all of me speaks of her as still needing care.

Across the series
A waiting figure, then deferral: 108 "nearly", 109 the pen held until the man left, tonight "not yet". Each night breaks off at the threshold (106 the price gun, 107 my open mouth, 109 the pen, tonight the door). Grandmother has turned from carer (106, 109) to the one hidden.

A question to carry
If what I most wanted behind the door was breathing, what was I counting so slowly to avoid finding there?

Carrying forward: I keep stopping just short of facing a loss, and I talk about my grandmother as someone who still needs me when the dream places her at the end of her life.

Archetypes present
My grandmother, the Great Mother (the figure who feeds and holds) of 106 and 109, is now the one held, asleep in warm linen like a child. The baby that isn't mine is the Child (what is still to come), and in the cots it lies beside old men at their ending. The old man saying "she's good at it" is a small Wise Old Man (the one who knows the way): she wants to be found.

Compensation: what the unconscious is supplying
Sorting it out, I read the stopwatch as measuring my caring. But she says is "it doesn't count if you're also counting." A Jungian reading suggests she rules out the counting, not the care. Straight after that, "I wasn't counting, I was looking", and later she "didn't look up". Awake, I turn this into a deadline, the pill by a certain time. The dream turns it into a game that only ends when I find her.

Amplification
In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the goddess, disguised as an old woman, nurses Demophoon, a baby who isn't hers, until his mother interrupts her. Jonah spent three days inside the great fish. Mine is small, warm, and lying in a bath.

Me as one psyche
I ruled the whale Fog, "a dice word". That shrinks a symbol (an image still alive with meaning) to a sign (a pointer to a known cause). Doegling is an old name for the bottlenose whale, and lamps burned whale oil before they burned paraffin. My whale smells of my grandad's lamp, and when I turn a tap the light goes out.

Across the series
In 100 I noted "no descent, no whale". Since then depth came by instrument (54, 78, 84), stopped at a fence (107) or rose through a stem (108). Tonight the deep animal is in the house, warm, and "my job now". My 109 question about which worry only my own hand could write got an answer in what happened, not in words: her, at the end. 109's ironing has become the airing cupboard, where ironed linen is kept. My falsifier was half-met: the measurer came back, but not at full strength.

Individuation: the task this dream sets
Finish the pull and see her as she is now, not as the warmth I remember in the towels.

A question to carry
When the stuck door gives, am I opening it to give her the pill on time, or to say "found you", the way the game was always meant to end?

Carrying forward: My grandmother, who always looked after me, now needs looking after, and I'm watching whether I can simply be with her or will keep treating her care as a deadline I have to check.

What I dreamed: I was playing hide and seek in a place that was part nursery and part the care home my grandmother ended her life in. Someone handed me a baby that wasn't mine, and a woman with a stopwatch timed me. Then I was searching for my grandmother with her pill clenched in my fist. A small warm whale lay in a bath. I could hear her breathing behind the cupboard door where she used to hide, and I pulled at the stuck door.

What I thought about it:

• Waking up: my hand was still curled round nothing, as if on the door.
• Sorting it out: the worry I couldn't write last time is her, and getting to her in time. The stopwatch is a warning that I might start treating my care as something I'm graded on.
• Thinking like Jung (old story patterns): she used to look after me, and now she is the one being looked after. Part of me thinks the whale was more than nonsense.
• Thinking like Freud (hidden wishes): I wish to find her alive, and I count slowly to put off what I might find.

Where I agreed with myself, and where I didn't: I agreed the worry is her. But one part of me noticed that the dream says she has died, while the rest of me talks as if she still needs me.

What's new since last time: Last night someone else did the checking for me. Tonight the checking is back in my own hand.

The one thing to remember: Look after her because she needs it, not because someone is holding a stopwatch.

Carrying forward: I am afraid of losing my grandmother, and I need to see whether I can simply be with her instead of treating her care as a deadline.