Dream Within a Dream, Part 2

I thought back to Elder Hillam’s question. I’d made plenty of lists in the past few months — movies to see, books to read, girls to look up. Spider-Man 3 was out, as well as the third Pirates of the Caribbean. Some new vampire books had apparently earned the rapt attention every bored housewife. Girls who had been too young for me before my mission were now ripe for the dating.

But none of it mattered. Even those lists were part of the dream. Now that the end was finally upon me, it struck me with such a jarring reality that nothing I had done before my mission ended could prepare me. The end was finally real in a way that it had never been. I felt a kinship to my old self, who had been so overwhelmed at the start of the mission, thrust into a new world.

The plane taxied into the Idaho Falls Regional Airport and stopped at the gate. Other missionaries and fellow travelers stood and reached for their belongings. I sat there, unable to turn back but afraid to go forward. After all this time, after all my struggles, after all the trials and travails and hardships and successes and rewards of missionary life, I had finally earned peace. Once I stepped through that gate, that hard-earned peace would be gone, replaced by …

By what?

Anxiety at readjusting to regular life? Contentment at rejoining family? Fear of an expanding unknown?

I walked through that gate.

At the bottom of the escalator, signs and banners welcomed the missionaries home: “WE LOVE YOU ELDER HILLAM,” or “WELCOME BACK ELDER SMITH.”

My family didn’t have balloons or signs; they only had smiles. That was good; signs would have been too much for me. My mother and sister were crying; my brothers and father were standing there, trying to look tough. They were unreal and yet so very real at the same time. They were photographs given life. They looked the same, and yet they looked different. Someone else was crying; it might have been me.

The dream was over.