The newness of the work and his reduced size made Thomas feel like he had gone through a time machine and had emerged some during his childhood. The illusion became perfect when his mother opened the door and he saw his mother as she had looked nineteen years before when she was only thirty-eight.
She hugged him maternally and said, “Welcome home, Tommy. Your old room is waiting for you. Why don’t you take your things and put them away in your closet. I’m getting some things down from the attic. If you get bored you can watch cartoons on the TV.”
Thomas nodded and went to his room. When he looked at the baseball pennant strewn walls, it seemed as if nothing had changed since he was ten. Even his old plastic airplane models hung from the ceiling by fishing line exactly as they had when he was a preteen.