One Must Imagine Sisyphus Happy

I am looking down at a gray cart. It looks like a janitor's cart. In the middle, it has a large sink basin filled with water. Around the basin are other compartments to fit things in. I notice that it is gray and plastic and wonder if that might have symbolic meaning.

I consider the sink, but can't decide if this object belongs in a kitchen or a bathroom. Now my mother is to my right and my sister is to my left. (I start to groan, because I used to hate when they appear in my dreams, but it doesn't bother me so much anymore). It seems we all cooked dinner together and now are washing the plates in the sink. So this cart goes in the kitchen. But I still have the wondering that it might also go in the bathroom, so I want to be sure to clean it very well between uses.

I scrub and scrub the thing, careful to get into the corners so that it is spotless. I also improve it. I add a little gauge that monitors the water pressure. I also modify some of the compartments on the left so that one fits exactly one cup of liquid while another one fits two cups.

My sister returns and we use the cart to bake several batches of cookies. The measurement cups are a great help for this. We sell the cookies and there's a long line out the door of people who want to buy them. After all the customers are satisfied, we start using the sink to clean everything again.

To maintain a high quality for the cookies we sold, we tossed out some of the broken and bitter ones. These leftover cookies are left in the sink, now soggy with water. My father enters from the right. He looks at these imperfect cookies and looks at my sister and me with scorn. It's as if he's accusing us that we didn't make very good cookies.

But as he's staring us down, one lingering customer stands up for us. He explains that everyone loved the cookies and ate them, so you can't judge the good cookies by the leftovers.

I wake up. I think, huh, that's a nice little parable.