Teeth falling out dream

Did you know that dreaming about teeth falling out is a common experience? I have had such dreams any number of times over the years, and I had one last night. Dream interpretation being what it is -- an inexact science, art or craft -- it is impossible to say exactly what those dreams are about. I note, however, that the literature tends to focus on such dreams being about transitions in life.

This makes a certain sense, if I realize that it is only one possible meaning of the symbol. But think about your teeth -- you have BABY teeth, and they fall out as you are growing up. As adults, we probably associate losing teeth with BEING BEAT UP IN A FIGHT and later with AGING.

In my most recent dream, losing my teeth took place in the context of being at a workshop that I did not want to give. (A fight? At least there was internal conflict.)  When my teeth started falling out, which was painless, by the way, it gave me an excuse to leave the workshop. (Leave work and retire? Certainly a part of my recent past.)  I am still in the middle of the retirement-transition. Experienced folk tell me it can take a year to adjust.

And, of course, there are those things associated with retirement that might be part of what is going on with my dreaming self -- aging and all that stuff: loss of power due to loss of  income, loss of youth and physical attractiveness (as if!) and energy, etc. (Is it significant that I chose an image of a young boy to illustrate this post? Well, duh!)

Of course, as Sigmund Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. This is Labor Day weekend and that is a major cultural transition in the United States: the end of summer, the end of vacation, the beginning of school and the beginning of autumn. We spent yesterday at a circus museum and an 1840s-era re-enactment, both things that hark back to a past that is now gone. The house is full of pending transitions: Michael A will be returning to Chicago -- a part of my own past -- and Peter is moving towards moving on. Tom is purchasing some land adjacent to ours, which makes "home" a bigger place. It is land that he once co-owned with his only brother, who died last fall. A major transition for Tom. But by taking the whole parcel now, it returns a part of his past in a way, because the "new" land is part of the original land grant of the farm his ancestors got when they came to Wisconsin in the 1840s. Hmm. Just at the  era represented in that re-enactment on the river.  Talk about a transition --that part of Tom's family came from a German village to the Wisconsin wilds.Not exactly the same as coming up here from Chicago-Hyde Park, but even so ...

So is there some major message in my dream, something I am not aware of in my waking life? Not really. But pondering the falling teeth and the nearness of falling leaves makes me more aware of things in my life that are starting to fall/fail. Falling teeth are kind of icky; falling leaves are beautiful.

Which shall  I see?