Stack, grow, climb

Two dreams i remember featured shelves. In the first one, i am examining a shelf in a cubicle (it might be my former cubicle when my company leased space in Dillard Drive in Cary). The shelf looks like plastic but is really steel. It’s a stacking shelf and only three shelves deep currently. I notice that the top shelf is loose and when i inspect it closer it’s actually two tops, one place over the other. I think that the person who built this shelf purposely chose an extra top for later expansion.

The second dream is less clear now and i’m not sure what the “tale” of the dream was but the part i remember that seems to contain a resonating message is i’m seated on a couch in a ?living room or maybe a lounge or waiting room. Besides myself, there is somebody that is there for me (my friend versus random stranger) and a Japanese family consisting of the young father and mother, a toddler boy and an infant child (i think also a boy). There are two couches on either side of a coffee table. My friend and i are chatting and not really paying attention to the family across the table from us. The family is interacting among themselves in Japanese. I notice the toddler wanders off through a set of sliding glass doors onto a cement patio. I don’t really think much of it at first and keep talking with my friend but, as i’m facing the glass doors and can see the toddler, i’m casually watching him because it doesn’t seem like his parents noticed that he’s wandered off and they’re busy cooing over little baby. There’s a high redwood fence around the patio so i’m not too concerned about the child's safety and think he's probably safe enough but as i watch he begins to climb what looks like chain link fence that is leaning up against the redwood fence. (I think now that it was really the metal skeleton of a bed but it was metal and linked similar to chain-link except the spaces were much smaller and more diamond shaped). As the child is climbing i interrupt the couple to say “I think you should pay attention to your child” and the mom gives the baby to the father and quickly retrieves her climbing son. 

For some reason, after i awoke and remembered these dreams i was inspired to think of a shelf in terms of a means to climb - a sort of stackable ladder. The meshed chain is a ladder made of connected loops.  My impression of ladders is that they take you higher. Although you also use them to come down from a high place, or descend into a deeper place, when i think “ladder” i always just think “up”. Growing up? Rising? Escaping?