Dream Journal
I stepped into my mother’s Sunday School classroom and caught my mom’s eye. Sitting at a short table, she nodded at me for encouragement and then looked across the room. I followed her gaze and saw Melissa standing with her back to the door helping a child with the day’s project. She was dressed very nicely in a pair of slacks and her hair was pulled up on her head and very curly.
I stepped back into the hall and pulled two preteens into the room with me. One of the kids with me was my niece T, and I helped her walk over to Melissa. She said, “Aunt Melissa?” and Melissa turned to face us. She was so happy to see T and gave her a really big hug. I noticed that T was almost as tall as Melissa and their hair looked almost identical.
I went back over to the door to talk with my mom when Dave, my youth pastor, opened the door and came into the room, pinning me behind the door. He wore kneepads and wrist guards and immediately apologized for nearly hitting me with the door.
He asked how I was doing and I told him, pointing towards T and Melissa, that I had brought my niece and my nephew who stood closer to my mother. He was distracted by the day’s craft and didn’t look up. “Is he the retarded one?” Dave asked. I was angry that he would not only call my nephew that word in a public situation, but also that he was so flippant about it.
T, my nephew, and Melissa had all gone through the same tests that were supposed to help them, and they all suffered in different degrees from the testing. I turned to leave with Heidi, the children’s mother, and she wondered aloud if those tests were what have been causing Melissa’s insistent headaches.
Themes: Melissa