What Do Alligators and Snow Represent in a Dream?

While driving by a hotel during a snowstorm, my car swerves off the road and falls beneath several feet of snow. Because the snow is light, I manage to open the driver's side door, climb up the incline, and walk around the front of the hotel where I enter the bar and ask several of the men who are drinking if they can help. None of them offer and in fact ignore me as they return to their drinking and talking, so I walk back to my car and get in, remembering that I had previously been able to maneuver my way out of a couple of ditches (in real life I actually did), so I should be able to do it again.

After moving the car back and forth, I successfully pull myself out of the ditch. But then, because the road is so icy, I fall off the road on the other side and the car falls deeper and deeper into that ditch.

Now I'm at home (new dream? same dream jumping ahead?), but it doesn't look like my home and an alligator is walking freely throughout my house. I feel as if I should be afraid of the alligator – at least for the sake of my grandchildren, but while I'm watching my step, I'm not really terrified of it. Somebody else is in the home with me but I don't know who it is because I can't see the person. 

In trying to get away from the alligator I become suddenly aware that the alligator is right behind me. I freeze in terror but I also feel a kind of calm as the alligator wraps its head around mine. It doesn't bite me though. It just keeps its huge jaw suspended around my head. I can't move, because I don't want any sudden movement to cause the alligator to bite me, but I feel no fear. I can see everything in front of me, but I don't want to move.  And the dream ends.

In trying to decipher the meaning of the first part of the dream, I think the reason I dreamed of snow is because I have been swamped with it lately (hmm, don't alligators live in swamps). Snowfall after snowstorm after snowfall after snowstorm has been my experience of the weather this winter season. But the snow must represent SOMETHING.

As should the alligator. I don't remember watching any programs about alligators. As a matter of fact the only reptiles I've seen lately are the little geckos from the Geiko ads. And yet, the more I investigate this dream and I connect this dream to the previous one, I believe the snow might represent my financial situation. I'm buried beneath the weight of my financial responsibilities (I'm actually waiting for better weather so I can put my house up for sale, because I can't afford to live here, though I really love my home and really don't want to move). 

The men in the bar could have represented all of the financial institutions I've been contacting in hopes of refinancing my home, but I've been having absolutely no luck. They all act as if my manufactured home is some type of pariah and I'm left to fend for myself. Manufactured homes are considered vehicles. Nobody wants to refinance a vehicle. Like the car in the dream, I'm going to have to get out of this mess by myself.

The alligator could represent some aspect of my situation. We often hear, "I couldn't wrap my head around it." In this dream though, the alligator was able to wrap its head around mine. I was at home (though not necessarily the one where I now live) and while I was afraid for my grandchildren, I wasn't afraid for myself. Perhaps the primitive reptilian part of my brain actually CAN figure out my dilemma. And selling my home seems to be the first step toward getting out from under the tremendous debt this home is causing me. So even though I don't want to move, just as I didn't want to move when the alligator had its head wrapped around mine, I know that I have to – unless my financial circumstances change.

The positive aspect of this dream is that I have always been able to get myself out of difficult situations, and this dream is telling me that I will be able to get myself out of this difficult situation.

Photo of alligator is from wikimedia commons.

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Ayla's Silly But Heart-warming Dream

Every morning my great granddaughter, 4-year-old Ayla, comes into my bedroom to give me my morning hug. Every morning I ask her about her dreams. Most of the time she can't remember them, but when she does she always starts by telling me her dreams as if they are stories.

This morning she told me she had a really silly dream and she began, as she always does with, "Once upon a time":

"Once upon a time I dreamed of a giant heart coming out of a bottle (she held her thumb and finger in such a way as to indicate the bottle was really small). It (the heart) was really colorful."

I asked her what the bottle looked like.

"The bottle had black and white stripes."

When I asked her if the bottle was the size of the little plastic bottle filled with candy that her grandmother (my daughter) had given her yesterday, she said yes. 

"Butterflies were flapping their wings around it."

The butterfly may have come about because at one point yesterday, my daughter showed Ayla a beautiful butterfly that was just outside our patio door. 

Like every other day, Ayla also drew on my iPad, and I told her that her drawing was very colorful. 

Ayla had incorporated several elements from the day before in this dream, all of which involved her grandma. I wanted to know if she thought the dream represented the love her grandmother had for her, because hearts represent love. 

She shrugged her shoulders before she closed the door behind her and said, "Maybe."