My Sister's Favorite Color was Blue

My sister's favorite color was blue. Everything and anything that was blue. She loved the water; lakes, rivers and especially the sea. I called her my seastar. 

 

 

 

 

 

 One day she brought me a perfect pink rose from the garden. I looked at it thoughtfully and said, You know, there are just not many naturally occurring things that are blue."

 

 

 

She opened her arms with a rather dramatic gesture, "Excuse me?" she said, "the sky?"

 

 

 "I can't very well bring you the sky can I?" I asked. She laughed, "you could try." "Yeah, all right, the next time I'm up there flying around, I'll pull you off a great big hunk. You can use it for a blanket." 

 "Do you think a hunk of sky would turn out like a blanket?" she asked.  I shrugged. "Not necessarily, but I'll take my sky shears with me and clip it carefully in the right shape." She had another small laughing fit. 'Sky shears?' The only things that are called 'shears' are pinking sheers." "Exactly," I said, "If I used PINKing sheers, the sky blanket would have pink edges thus being even more beautiful that a regular sky. "    

Besides," I added, "sky scissors, doesn't work. scissors has too many syllables."  "It only has one more syllable," she said. "Right and that's one too many. It just doesn't work."  She was thinking. "You use shears to shave sheep," she said.  "SHAVE sheep? you don't SHAVE sheep!" I exclaimed. They I lay on the ground and kicked my feet and cracked up for some time.

 

She lay back in the grass and gazed up at the wide expanses of blue. "Do you think it will fly? LIke a flying carpet?" 

"A sky blanket? Oh, yeah. I'm sure it would."

 

 

 

 

 

 Once, I found a big patch of Bachelor Buttons in side yard. They were so magnastically blue. I picked as many as my small hands would hold. Passing my grandmother in the kitchen she said, "where on earth are you going with  those??"

" I'm taking them Lizzy." 

"Honey, said Grandy kindly, "they are weeds, she won't like weeds."

 Oh, but she did. She squealed and yelled, "Blue Flowers!!" Then she put them in a vase on her dresser with her treasures, which happened to included a blue candle I gave her for her birthday and a Blue Jay's feather tipped with white that I had found in the canyon.

So, I was always looking for blue, because my favorite thing in the world was to give her something she loved - and she loved blue. I had a special fund that I kept hidden. Fred's Flowers had blue roses - about once every three years. I darkened their door a lot more often than that. I would come in and the sales lady would say, "Sorry, dear, not today." When they finally had them, I could afford one. One was enough.

 

 

And so . . . Dr. Lizette Peterson-Homer, where ever you are, I am still bringing you blue; 

blue rivers, 

                            blue lakes,

                                                 a myriad  of salt blue seas

 blue birds

blue glass, blue dresses and the blooming patterns of a blue moon, haunting the indigo blue of a still night sky. 

 If I could find you, I would bring you that moon and all of the clear sharp stars, blazing out of the blue around it. I would bring you the width and depth of a sweet summer blue sky, the shadows of blue that paint the cold, unbroken snow.  I would bring you white sand everlastingly waiting for the touch of a turquoise sea.

 

 

 

I would bring you Faeries of Blue . . .

And Baubles too . . .

I would bring you the flashing splash of falling blue waterfalls. If I could, I would bring you the bones of the mountains rising blue and true for protection . . .

and the secret mystery of a deep blue dream, soft summer twilight breathing an undiscovered enchantment of blue.

Perhaps where you have gone there is are explosions of glorious blue, flaring and bursting in a beauty unknown to this world. Perhaps they were waiting for your fast, brilliant mind to discover the reasons, the patterns, the meaning.  I would bring you the universe to examine and ponder, then watch as your eyes narrowed with thought and then shone with excitement when the flash of lightening hit you and you had the answer. You always found the answer, you were a lightening rod, always working and waiting for the explosion of understanding that always came.  

 

This world is empty without you, but still and forever . . .

 I will bring you blue.