I had a dream I was at my parents and we had bought my father home from the nursing home. It was Saturday morning and my father had gone out and wasn't home and my mother and I were concerned. Usually my father ran quick errands on Saturday morning - to get fertilizer or a car part or something for the garden and would come right back. It was summer and was starting to rain.

I went outside and my father pulls up in a little hunter green Jaguar. He's not in his wheelchair and is younger and wearing a black v-neck sweater over a white t-shirt and bluish-gray work pants. We have two other cars in the driveway and one is the car we actually do own in real life.

Dad has the windows on the Jaguar open even though it is raining. He had gone out to get the car fixed up. I sit inside and think this would be cool to inherit and drive to the city. But I imagine that even though it's an older and heavy car, it's tiny and bringing it into the city with the big traffic and lack of air bags might be tricky.

Then the car as I am sitting in it starts to take off. It's still not working right so I can't quite stop it. It's better to let it go than to try to turn it around. It's like if you take your foot off the brake, it idles so fast it starts to move.

I am out in the street but do not know how to put it in reverse because it is stick so I realize/decide that it is better to drive it around the block and just pull it back into the drive way that way. I hope Dad won't be mad.

The upholstery is a golden yellow corduroy and the inside roof is a red velvet. It is cozy but spacious enough for one really. Anymore would feel claustrophobic.

On the street, there's a garbage can and something else in the middle of the road. The streets are made of the old blue stone that they were made of when I was little before the town repaved them with the standard, ugly black top. I clumsily drive between the obstacles on the road.

Then I am on the block behind ours and the next thing I know I am inside a store? a dorm? and then a restaurant driving my father's wheelchair instead. It is like one of those open air, summer-town restaurants. I am going down the aisle and there is a nerdy African American teenage boy who spills a cappucino on me. I am almost home.

I say, "I'm sorry, it's all my fault" to the kid. Then this woman is trying to ask me to pay twenty dollars for the coffee. I say that's outrageously overpriced and she says, "You just admitted it was your fault!"

I say it's a figure of speech like I was being polite to have said it and that I never touched the boy. But the truth is, I can't remember if my feet in the chair bumped him a little but I do know I did not plough into him.

She says she's calling the police, homocide dept. Then she corrects herself and just says police.I am leaving and tell her I live right behind here and she can find me.

It is interesting to see our house and garden from the street in the back. There is a gently sloping concrete path back to our house which I take through our backyard. I am back at the garage and Dr. House is Dad. He's totally understanding about me taking the car. Before I can explain the fast idle, he says the car idles fast and takes off. Our garage is kind of large and sunken and reminds me of one of my relatives in Cold Spring Harbor.