Ever since he can remember, the Preacher wanted a motor-scooter. Something about the wind in his hair and no passengers, I think.

Perhaps it was his shoulders, stooped by other people’s burdens, or an obscene increase in gas costs. Whatever, I said, one day over lunch. “Why not go check out scooters? You haven’t done that in years.”

He ejected from his seat. A few weeks later I followed him home — big man on a tiny bike, black with red flame detailing. Under his helmet — only a grin. We stopped at the gas station — four bucks to the fill line.

We dubbed the bike Cricket. It buzzed him about for two summers. Then came the mosquito bite that sent him, paralyzed, into hospital for six months. “To ride my scooter again,” he listed as one of his goals for recovery.

Cricket hibernated for three years. “Let’s sell it,” I said. “You can’t get a walker on a scooter, and your left arm is still paralyzed. I almost lost you to a mosquito; I’m not so keen on turning you loose on a motorbike.”

But one day last summer I got home from work to find the bike sitting in the driveway, and the Preacher sitting on the bike. He smiled, turned the key, and drove off, wobbling and grinning.

It makes me crazy, you know. But few things are sweet as a resurrected dream — when it’s God that makes it possible.

Got a departed dream? Let it go, then give God time.