Pterodactyls on the Road to Home

Laela and me in Balti

My sitemate Laela (meaning she is also a Peace Corps Volunteer living and working in Balti) recently invited me to join her for some activities at a center she works with called Drumul Spre Casa (DSC). In Romanian this translates to “the road to home.”  DSC is a temporary placement shelter for youth from at-risk family situations.  This includes such situations as single-parents without the means to support their children, drug or alcohol addicted parents, or absence of parents due to leaving the country to work abroad without taking their children.  Laela arranges one activity per week at the center and last week she invited me to lead a yoga class.  Walking into a new place to teach, no matter the subject, one never knows quite what to expect.  However I do know I will likely be the one to learn something.

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I had met Luda during a previous visit to the center.  She had seemingly flown out the front doors and leapt into Laela’s arms with a loud HELLO!  She had the energy of a fairy and her short pixie hair, sharp light blue eyes, freckles and slightly upturned nose, gave her the look of a sprite.  I loved her!  I joked with her in Russian about Laela’s blue nail polish hiding underneath her purple gloves.  “Surprise!” we giggled.  Yes, Luda is a spitfire. 

When we arrived  for the yoga class, we entered a scene of girls from the local university leading the children in a costume game.  They had all made head-dresses and were singing songs in Russian about friendship and home and then dancing around like “Indians” (yes-Native American is more PC I know).  Hmmm, I thought, this will be an interesting act to follow.  I sat down and watched as the activity wound down.  The college students handed out some treats and the children began to disperse.  The energy was still very high, very rowdy and here came hopping along, Luda.    She took my hand, opened it up and placed a raisin in it.  She was sharing her treat with me!  I was immediately hit with how incredibly generous this was.  Here was a little girl who couldn’t live at her home because her family was either too poor, had left the country or had other issues of abuse or violence, giving ME her treat.  And not only did she give me a raisin, she gave me the little plastic dinosaur toy they had given her too.  It was a blue Pterodactyl. 

I didn’t leave that day with the blue Pterodactyl, in fact I left with a pink one.  A little boy had seen me holding the blue one.  His was pink.  Without exchange of words, our eyes met, we nodded, and we switched.  Using the language beyond words. This entire exchange and relationship is common for a Peace Corps Volunteer-to experience this generosity and selflessness of a people who seemingly have so much “less” than us.

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 I tend to see my life symoblicly, seeing meaning in things others may pass over.   I won’t go into whether this a “right” or “wrong” way of thinking.  I do understand that life is just happening, and that I am the one adding meaning to it. However, I have always loved legends, prophecies, symbols, signs, omens, superstitions.  That’s the way I am and that’s OK. I like meaning.  So when Luda first handed me the dinosaur toy and I told her it was a Pterodactyl, my mind leapt to a reoccurring dream I have about…you guessed it…Pterodactyls… swooping  over me.  It is always an intense dream with me having thoughts of first incredible fear followed by reasoning that this cannot be happening as these animals are long extinct, followed by me realizing I must be someplace really crazy, or that I must be dreaming.  And so at this point I gain the ability to begin to lucid dream-to take control of my experience.  But I always wake up before I can begin...

Luda’s generosity was in turn also a gift in that it encouraged me to finally decipher what it was my soul, my inner knowing, was trying to teach me in my dream state.

I looked up what it can mean to dream about dinosaurs.  Not surprisingly I got this:

”To see a dinosaur in your dream, symbolizes an outdated attitude. You may need to discard your old ways of thinking and habits. Alternatively, being chased by a dinosaur, may reflect old issues that are still coming back to haunt you”

For me this signifies the outdated ideas I carry about who I am, what I am supposed to do with my life, how I should look ect.- based on what others around me say.  It’s a mistake-I know.  It’s our families, our friends, our coworkers, the media…all sources outside of us, and our relationship to them, shaping how we in turn shape our lives, our perspectives.  When I get caught up in the “should” way of thinking, in swoops the Pterodactyl to remind me to rid of that thinking.  Just like the emotions of my dream, these thoughts come out of: first fear (of not being accepted, of not belonging) and then are hit with my reasoning, usually convincing me of why these outside sources must be right, and then the eventual realization that…it’s all an illusion.  The truth is I am in a pretty crazy place here on Earth. But also, I am free to control how I see it, how I perceive…I am in control of me.  And so, I am on the road home.

Om tat sat. 
XOm