The only constant in my life besides little Stephen was my dream. The same dream, over and over. The same jungle, which I now associated with the images I’d seen of New Guinea. The same figure, singing to me without words or melody.
I begged God to show me more, if this was his way, but I had only that same dream. Only that long, low, high, beautiful note reaching down the valley to me as I rushed toward it with the wind in my hair.
Come to me. Find me. Join me. Save me…
The haunting call would not leave me. The dream became my hidden obsession, calling to me without reprieve every few nights. I made no attempt to silence it. Instead I began to look forward to it each night, to soak in its promise and long for its fulfillment.
Three months after my father’s death, the call of that distant land became too loud for me to ignore. Many said that I was only looking to run away, to cast off all the suffering of my former life, and to find a new one. Perhaps there was some truth to that.
But those same people did not know how real my dreams felt. And I didn’t try to make them understand. They only would have branded me a lunatic.
My sisters thought I was losing my mind when I first spoke of my interest in becoming a missionary. Did I want to be celibate?, they wanted to know. Wasn’t I just chasing wild imaginations of distant paradise in the wake of hardship? Didn’t I have an obligation to raise Stephen on the estate left by Father? I had a good life in Atlanta, they insisted. Why throw it away?
But in my way of thinking, it was Atlanta that had become nothing.
Soon I could think of nothing other than leaving Georgia. At the very least, I reasoned, I should visit that far part of the world to see for myself if my dreams were more than flights of fancy.
As it turned out, mission agencies rarely accepted single mothers for service in the field abroad, so after much consideration and numerous discussions with various experts in such matters, I made the decision to take a trip to see for myself what the possibilities were. I certainly had no shortage of resources, having received a sizable inheritance.
A World War II veteran at our church had served on Thursday Island, off the northern tip of Queensland, Australia, just south of New Guinea. He spoke of the island in such endearing terms and with such assurance that there was no danger there that I decided I would visit. Perhaps I might then venture north into New Guinea. Just an exploratory trip, you see? I had to know for myself, and I would take the journey cautiously, one step at a time, just in case my sisters were right about my state of mind.
I packed two large suitcases for me and an even larger one for Stephen. Everything but his crib went into that elephant-size bag. I remember laying out half of my own wardrobe on my bed before figuring out a way to squeeze all of it into my two cases.
All the talk of Queensland being paradise notwithstanding, I prepared for every eventuality. Pants for any jungle trek. Shorts for the beach, more pants in case the others got soiled or eaten by cockroaches. Blouses of all varieties, dresses for the casual stroll and for any dinner party. And shoes. Shoes for the dance floor, shoes for the beach, shoes for walking around town, shoes for traveling home, and shoes for blazing trails through the tropics. The shoes alone took up half of one bag.
Then there were my lingerie, toiletries, makeup, jewelry, and books. I packed enough clothing, diapers, and formula to last Stephen a week. The airline had a weight limit for each passenger, but paying the fines posed no problem. Stephen and I flew into Sydney on a Pan American flight and then up to Horn Island on a twin-engine airplane. There we boarded a boat for a fifteen-minute hop to Thursday Island.
If you look on a map of the world, you will see that Australia looks rather like a small pig without feet—snout on the left looking down at the Indian Ocean. On its back is one spike above the large territory called Queensland. Just north of this spike is a string of tiny islands, and a hundred some-odd miles north of those islands is the huge island called New Guinea, which looks something like a bird.
Thursday Island was a tiny jewel in the Coral Sea roughly one mile wide by two miles long. Aqua waters gently lapped white-sand beaches frequented by adventurous vacationers from all over the world. For a week I took it all in, nearly delirious with the notion that I had found paradise. The people were extraordinarily friendly and welcoming and I quickly made friends, both among the locals and at the mission that I visited on several occasions. Here was a world that was color-blind, filled with cheery voices and wide smiles.
It wasn’t the same as my dream, but I felt as though I was finding myself.
On the seventh day I worked up the courage to venture out to sea, a prospect that was both exhilarating and a bit frightening, seeing as how I had never actually been on a boat before this trip.
Following the recommendations of Father Reuben at the Catholic mission, I contacted a local captain named Moses, who agreed to take me out the next afternoon for a reasonable price.
So it was that I boarded that little white sailboat with my two-year-old son and headed out to sea on that fateful day.
I chided myself relentlessly in the hull of that battered boat. I begged God to put me back in the safety of my home in Atlanta. I felt like Jonah in the belly of a whale, having made an error of my calling, which was surely to anywhere but there. Or, more likely, I had naively made absurd dreams out to be more than they were.
But I now know that there was also perfect reason to what seemed madness in the belly of that whale. If my mother had not died when she did, my father would not have gone into a depression and demanded I marry. If I had not married Neil, I would not have given birth to Stephen. If I hadn’t given birth to Stephen, I might have never dreamed of that distant jungle. If both Neil and my father had not died when they did, I might not have been predisposed to pursue that dream across the ocean.
And if I had not visited Thursday Island and gone under with that white sailboat, the harrowing events that followed would not have allowed me to see what I was meant to see.
Which, as it turned out, was a place of terrible loss and death.
Chapter Three
IT WAS dark when I awoke in the sea. Pitch-black. For several seconds I hung limp, lost to any understanding of where I was or what had happened to me. My head throbbed. Slowly details filtered into my mind.
I was floating on my back, staring up at a vast empty space. Or I was dead. But no, I could feel something pressing into my back, keeping me from sinking into the water. I was alive.
Other details drifted into my mind. I had been on a boat. A white sailboat. We had sailed into a storm. The captain, Moses, had been swept overboard. The boat had capsized.
Stephen had been in the boat with me.
I jerked up and tried to steady myself by kicking my legs and flailing my arms. My feet found nothing but water beneath me. My head, however, struck something solid only a foot or so above me. I was under the hull?
I spun, searching for my baby, but I could see nothing.
“Stephen!”
My scream sounded hollow in the body of the overturned sailboat. The sea was calm, which meant I had been under this bubble long enough for the gale to subside.
“Stephen!”
Visions of my baby being lost in those towering waves immobilized me. He’d been dragged into the depths. Consumed by sharks.
Then I remembered that I’d secured him to the seat with a strap so that he wouldn’t be thrown about. I sucked in a lungful of air and dived, straining my stinging eyes.
I could see nothing below but dark water. I twisted back and up and saw the surface—green water filtering daylight around the dark hull of the boat, most of which was nowhere to be seen. Air trapped in the bow had kept afloat the section that saved my life.