Strange dream

[fbhjr]

I dreamed I was in the house I grew up with and both my parents were there. This surprised me as I haven’t been back there in almost 20 years and that was for my father’s memorial when he died.
But, the three of us were in the living room despite that.

My father was very upset that someone had been using his wood lathe to turn rectangular parts round and blamed me for it.
“It’s been 20 years since I’ve even been in this house, and 20 before that since I used that lathe,” I said. “I’m not the one you should be mad at.”
“Don’t give me that!” he shouted. “You’ve been ruining my wood and damaging my tools!”
“Maybe you should talk with my brother. He actually lives here and might have done it.”
“You’ve been coming in an using it!”
“No. I haven’t even been to this house in a long time.”
“You’re sneaking in when I can’t see you.”
“Nope.”
“Admit it!”
“I haven’t used your lathe since the 1970’s. It’s now 2020…”
“Just because I haven’t caught you at it doesn’t mean you didn’t do it!”

“You shouldn’t yell at him,” my mother said. “It’s not like you were using the wood for anything.”
“I can’t now! He’s ruined it!”
“Not sure why you think I did this,” I said. “But, I’m not getting yelled at for it.”

I walked to the door and left.
Dream ends

I had been thinking about my mother and her relationship with me since I saw my Aunt Saturday.

And, at work I had been talking with one of my coworkers about my father’s wood lathe. He wants to get one for his home, even though he admits he doesn’t have any need for it, and might well not use it.
So, I had been telling him how when my father had to watch over us as kids, he let my brother and I play with his lathe. We didn’t make anything useful on it, just turned square things round.

Yes. My father’s idea of keeping an eye on his young children was to let them use power tools without supervision or safety equipment. Sometimes I wonder how I still manage to have all my fingers…

The thing I thought most strange in this dream was how my parent’s usual positions were reversed.
It was always my mother who yelled at us, often in defiance of any logic, and my father who would stand by and watch.
Although he almost never said anything during the argument, he would occasionally say “she shouldn’t have said that to you” afterwards.

The only times my father every said anything even remotely critical like in this dream was when my mother made him. But, even then he didn’t say it with much energy.
Most of his complaints were things like “I wish you wouldn’t do that” or “I wish you had done this other thing instead”.

So, I woke up confused by this one…