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“I was only kidding. So you had a recurring dream about those patchwork mountains?”
    “What’s recurring mean?”
    “It’s when you have the same dream again and again. Was it exactly the same as the one you told me about with the fabric mountains?”
    “Well, kinda. It was all so nice—it started with shimmering water and then I was flying again, only this time the fabric turned into real mountains and crops and they were all dried up and brown. They looked like the cornfields back home when they are all crinkly. Only it wasn’t just corn and stuff—it was every plant and every blade of grass. Just fields and fields of dead everything everywhere.”
    Brenda didn’t speak. She was listening carefully, wondering if she would need to make an appointment with a counselor before school started. Maybe Carrie was experiencing trauma from the divorce and it was bringing on these bad dreams.
    “And then it ended like the last dream with that same oozing black stuff that just came up from the middle and spread out. And then I woke up.”
    “Oh, so that was just this morning. No wonder you were so shaken…you had a bad dream.”
    “No, no, no. That’s not why I was crying! I told you I want to go home,” Carrie said in a huff.
    “Okay, okay. Calm down,” Brenda said, trying to steer her daughter away from another discussion about why they couldn’t stay in New Jersey.
    “I’m trying to tell you about my cool dream, Mom, and you want to make it about us moving.”
    “I’m sorry. What do you think of your dream? What does it mean to you?”
    “Well, I think it was so awesome to feel like I was flying again. I was way up high and I could see for miles. It was like I had eyes in the back of my head. It felt as if I was looking in all directions and I could feel the coolness of the air as I flew.”
    “Sounds like a bird. If you have this dream again you better check for wings.”
    “Wow, that would be great if I were a bird. But I don’t think I was an animal. It felt like it was just me. The dried-up crops were awful, though. It felt like something happened to all the beautiful mountains. And the black gunky stuff spread over it so fast, Mom, that nothing could stop it. I actually woke up in tears and I reached for Flannel, but….”
    Brenda looked over at her daughter and decided maybe she was working something out on her own. Perhaps she should wait on that call to the counselor. Was Carrie in the process of discovering something new about herself? “Maybe it’s a message. Maybe you’re learning something. Have you tried meditating lately?”
    “Well, no. I haven’t done that in months. I try to sit and not think of anything like you taught me, but it’s hard to make everything just go away. Maybe I should try it again; maybe I am getting a message about something. What in the world does calico fabric have to do with anything?”
    Brenda was a firm believer in meditation. Each morning she would find a quiet space and sit alone in silence. She had been doing it for years and it had taken practice to learn how to move all thoughts aside and just sit in stillness. Sometimes she came away with creative ideas. Sometimes she came away with an answer to a problem she was having and she always felt more peaceful. She had tried teaching friends and some people laughed at her or thought she was following some religious ritual. This was untrue so she had stopped sharing her discoveries with anyone and kept them to herself and her best friend Sam. Teaching Carrie was something she had only thought of recently. Carrie’s anger about the separation was directed at everything around her. Maybe meditation would help ease some of her daughter’s stress; it sure couldn’t hurt, she thought.
    They drove the rest of the way in silence. Carrie daydreamed about the meaning of her calico visions. Brenda wished the entire breakup with her husband was a bad dream and she would wake up and her life would be happy and