Reconstructing Adolescence

Both of my parents are present in a darkened bedroom that is something like a hodgepodge of all my various childhood and teenage bedrooms. My mother is talking, in her usual matter-of-fact way, about the fact that I need to begin wearing a bra, while discomfort with this conversation positively radiates from my father. Why he remains present is a puzzle, as does my mother's lack of concern with his presence for this conversation, though in fact she could at times be startlingly direct about many things that other kids parents seemed to tiptoe around ro try to deal with more "discretely."

I too am slightly embarassed by the setting, and by the timing of this conversation, particularly his presence, but most of my discomfort is for him, or at least is provoked by the looks of discomfort I am getting from him. At the same time I appreciate and admire her sometimes extreme directness, maybe because it's something I've never felt quite so adept at, but a quality I greatly admire (and have often been jealous of) in her.

And perhaps I also enjoy a little the way she seems to be trying to embarass him with this conversation.

I don't actually seem to see my body during this conversation (I rarely do see my own body in dreams, unless I am dreaming from the POV of someone else). The light is very low, but I assume during this conversation, from context and the emotional tenor of the moment, that I am wearing practically nothing, and am certainly topless, since the sense I have is that the conversation must have started when my mother noticed that I'd begun to develop breasts.

An odd thing is that I am aware of being significantly older than I would have been when anything like this conversation might have actually happened, and, of course, the dream does not reflect at all how this was dealt with when I was developing.

Other incidents followed, mostly an extended shopping trip, as I recall, but this is the only fragment I had a distinct memory of once I awoke.