Coming Home Again

I had a dream about something that will soon be a reality. Well at least half the dream will be, I hope.

I dreamt that Meghan came home for her first weekend in two months. This dream is the result of what I know will soon happen. We recently had her IEP meeting and one of the key points was arranging for the bus company to schedule her trips home from school. She will start coming home every other weekend. (We will still visit her at school during the off weekends.) This will be such a nice schedule. And I look forward to her coming home again and I’m obviously thinking about how she will react to being home. Will she bounce right back and trot around the house as if she had never left; or will she act like a complete stranger and wonder when she’s going back “home.” Yikes!

In my dream she walked in through the front door for the first time but I couldn’t completely enjoy the moment because a sales woman was also at the door--selling encyclopedias, no less. I tried to cut her off without being rude or slam the door in her face, but she proceeded to entertain me before the big sales pitch and started doing acrobats in my front yard; like a gymnast. Doing flip after flip after flip; forward and backwards; I must say she was very good. While this woman was flipping in my front yard, I was also trying to look around to see how Meghan was doing and reacting to being home. I found her running up the stairs but couldn’t see her face. I think she had a bounce in her step, though, so that was a good sign.

But the darn gymnast/encyclopedia sales woman was still flipping in my front yard. Until she finally says: “Why aren’t you going to buy my encyclopedias?”—cutting right to the chase—oh good! I explained to her, as I do with a lot of annoying sales people, that I have handicap children and their therapies are putting my right under (cue sad face). Yes, pulling the old sympathy card, so what if it’s pathetic; it’s effective most of the time.

Then I proceeded to tell her of the two-year plan my father was on to pay for encyclopedias for us when I was a kid. We would get one a month until all A-Z encyclopedias were in our bookshelf. Then we would pretend to be happy as a clam and read them here and there, for appearances, of course; until one day all we were doing was dusting them as they sat in their designated spot in the shelf looking all pretty from A-Z.

So I told her: “Who needs encyclopedias now, anyway; we’ve got the Internet.”

“Become a gymnast!” And then slammed the door in her face.

For all you dream analysts out there, what’s up with the acrobatic sales lady anyway?