Dream: The Turtle Kittens

Dream 20020905, 7:00 AM:

I’m outside in the back yard, although it’s a different back yard than the one I have now. There is a small shed, although it seems to be almost like a half-buried root cellar, and beside it there is a stack of what look like mailboxes, although they are flower pots. They are boxes facing toward the front, but have dirt in them and some plants sticking out forward. I look inside the little shed, and see that there are baby turtles hatching. They are tiny, and not buried much at all – there seem to be a LOT of them, like 10 or so. Some of the tiniest ones are nearly white. I look very closely, and I can see one or two still inside their egg shells.

I get back out of the little shed, and I see a black turtle face with yellow and orange spots sticking out of one of the stacked flower pot / mailboxes. I pick the turtle up, and carry it inside with me. Its body is shaped more like a water turtle, with a long pointed snout, but it has box turtle style markings. Its shell looks like it is carved from wood, with deep quilted diamond shapes instead of scutes. It has probably a dozen or so of these shapes on its back, and they are all the same size. The color of it is a dark brown, like walnut, although the texture is more like mahogany.

When I go inside, Deborah is here, and she’s doing something in the bathroom. It looks like it’s the bathroom in the Kingwood house. There is a door between the part that has the sinks and the part that has the tub, and she is kneeled down beside the tub doing something. The door has stuff draped on it, and she’s recently painted it white. I realize that the paint is peeling, like it didn’t adhere to the wood, and I peel off a big section of it. It’s peeling off in huge rubbery sheets, like the entire painted surface is coming off in shreds. She seems very upset to see the turtle, and she starts telling me that she doesn’t like turtles, and it’s gross and why do I have it in the house. I want to show her the baby turtles, but after the fit she’s throwing, I’m not sure whether to show them to her or not.

I take her outside, and we look into the shed (I don’t remember ditching the big turtle, but I’m not carrying it any longer) and there are a bunch of tiny kittens, arranged exactly where the turtles were. They are lying in exactly the same positions, as if the turtles had just transformed into kittens. We ooh and ahh over them, because they are so cute and so tiny. Deborah is crying now, and I give her a hug. I don’t know what she’s upset about.