We use our parents like recurring dreams, to be entered into when needed.

Lessing’s line treats parents less as fixed, ever-present authorities and more as psychological figures we revisit. Like recurring dreams, they return in altered forms—summoned by need, crisis, guilt, nostalgia, or the search for permission and reassurance. The comparison suggests that adulthood does not end dependency so much as internalize it: we “enter into” our parents as memories, scripts, and emotional templates that shape how we interpret love, conflict, and self-worth. The phrasing also carries a faint moral sting—“use” implies instrumentality—hinting that even intimate family bonds can become resources we draw on to stabilize identity, rather than relationships we continually know afresh.