I'm camping in the Amazon Basin, in a grassy clearing that looks oddly like my childhood back yard: a neat rectangular lawn. I look for a spot to sleep. I have my thick coverlet. A TV narrator on the soundtrack warns "Even a spot free of ants should be watched for a while--no visible activity may still hide a nest of something so fierce all other bugs are scared off." So when I find a bare sunken patch, with some sheets in it, a comfortable little nest, I watch it quite a while. But I don't see any ants at all, and at last I curl up in the hollow and go to sleep.

No problems in the night, but when I get up the next morning, my TV narrator says "Amazonian natives bury dead babies in shallow pits, wound in sheets. Even adults are sometimes buried just under the surface." I shudder, and roll out of the pit. My coverlet's gotten wound around the sheets... tangled... I pull and pull, but it's like the pit is clutching at my blanket, pulling back. Creepy.

At last I unwind it all... and find a dead baby at the bottom. Crusted with yellow slime--I don't know what it is, but suspect the baby died of some disease. Will I catch it? Slime on my blanket now. I don't want to use it again. Feel like it's the mark of my crime--I slept in an open grave! Even if I wash it, I'll worry and wonder.

I feel guilty--and unclean. I need to see a doctor right away!

And get rid of that blanket.

WHEN I WAKE

• Amazonian ants = Dominant aunts! I have a couple of formidable ones...
• The least-seen Amazon aunts are fiercest = my Aunt Helga! I met her only once, as a kid--she wasn't into kids. The wife of my uncle Willy. Or is she? She later left him for another man! And I have a vague memory my folks said they reunited--but did they? Wow--I truly don't know if Helga's married or not, in the family or not--my aunt or not! Helga truly was an Amazon, too--a tall, cool blonde, amused, dominant, subtly scornful. Uncle Willy slunk round her like a whipped dog, willing to do whatever she wanted. Or that's how it looked to me as a kid. And I wonder--I'm strangely wary toward women I'm attracted to. Could that be a childhood fear I'll meet a Helga, become a Willy?
• Fear a disease from a dead baby = toxicity/stress buried since childhood?
• See a doctor right away = Uh-oh! I just missed an appointment for allergy shots! The dream warns me to reschedule right away--I need that shot.
• Contaminated blanket = literal? Not plague, but my old blanket may be contributing to my allergies! Get a hypoallergenic blanket.
• Sleeping in a grave, touched by death: given the date of the dream, that's easy to interpret...

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