Blue Desire

I had no idea why or how, but Deanna easily drew me into her world. A world of flat clouds and no horizon; of towering nimbus, blinding sundogs and radiation fog. A three-dimensional world with an extra dimension thrown in – space-time, frosted with sweet, viscous disorientation. A world that lights your hair on fire, makes your palms sweat, and gives you that fluttery feeling in your gut you experienced as a kid when your balloon bicycle tires momentarily lifted off the ground as you crested a steep hill at mach speed.

She was my flight instructor, and she is my friend.

Deanna gave birth to a bouncing baby boy when she herself was but a child of 17. Her family, caught in the mindset of the conservative 1950s, disapproved of the pregnancy. They shipped her off to Chicago, where she lived in an unwed mothers’ home until her love child appeared.

Thirty years later, Deanna began to search for Baby Boy Bishop.

And through a series of unlikely events, I had the privilege of helping her contact him. I was in Florida on a business trip, and followed up on a lead Deanna’s private investigator had found. When I called him on the phone, and told him “someone close to him” was looking for him, he guessed right off. It’s my mom. She’s looking for me, right? I’ve waited for this phone call all my life, he said.

So they met. He had Deanna’s eyes. He had her mannerisms, although he had never spent time with her. He had been trying to learn how to fly. He was the son of an itinerant musician. He could play any instrument he picked up. He had a wonderful wife and three beautiful children.

And then…life happened. He lived on the east coast, she on the west coast. Later, she moved to Alaska, the farthest reaches of the western boundaries of the United States. They lost contact. But she thinks about him often, and of her grandchildren. She wants them to know how much she misses them.

Although she gave up the right to be a part of their lives when she was so young, nothing can erase the longing she feels for them. She thinks that she would be happy if she could be a tiny bird on the window sill for a day, to sing to them a unique and cheerful song. She wishes she could be a sunbeam to warm their faces, or a gentle breeze blowing through their hair. She thinks, if she could be a friendly ghost, and sing them a special song that they would know in their hearts was just for them; it would make them know that she never -- for one moment -- stopped loving and caring for them. She thinks, if she could do this without interfering in their lives, she could go on living. She could die a happy person. She thinks, if the song was good enough, they would know that the loss was hers. Not theirs.