MIDNIGHT DREAMS ON THE RADIO

For once in my life, it is time for a public midnight confession.  Some may say I did a bad, bad thing.  But as they also say, life is but dream.  As a teenager, I would lie awake listening to the smooth sounds coming  from the clock radio next to my bed.

I met her on a Monday. While I was cruising the strip to the Tastee Freeze for a creamy treat,  I saw her standing there.  It wasn’t the first time I ever saw her face.  I believed that I was just dreaming.

She cruised through downtown in Dublin town where  they were dancing in the streets under the pretty neon lights.  Her classical jaguar headed to the hamburger stand with the radio blasting. I tingled as she passed by and turned in the drive in.  She looked so fine and I wanted to make her mine. 

I mustered all the courage I could.  My heart was pounding. My knees were failing.  I slowly crept closer, closer to her side.  The words would not come out of my quivering lips.  But then I stuttered and called out,” Are you? .......

With a soft, low monotone voice and sweet, sweet smile, she whispered, “Yes, I am.”

She told me that she had enough of Mr. Guder and headed out Ventura Highway, leaving her brother Dick behind standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona.  

She had something that I couldn’t  resist, but she didn’t really seem to know that I did exist. So I began to dream of her and me and how it was gonna be. 

We hopped in my pink Cadillac and were on the road again. 

We spent the night looking at the stars while lying  on a sheet of white satin. When the sun came up and caught us crying, we went our separate ways.  We were two dreamers off to see the world. 

I was only eighteen and I didn't know what I wanted.  I had to get away and get out this place, maybe I would fly into outer space.  I  woke up each morning wondering why everything wasn't the same as it was and how life would go on with a heart that was not beating. It all ended when she said goodbye. 

In her 24th year in the spring of her life, she had only began to look for love in all the wrong places.

We never talked again.  I cried myself to sleep when I found that she had died. It was the hardest thing I've ever done  to keep believing there's someone like her in this crazy world for me.  None of the nights comforted me. I would  lay wide awake at 4 a.m. without my friend in sight, hanging on a hope that all would be alright.  I kept thinking that I could be asking perfection of a quite imperfect world and fool enough to think that's what I would find.

Then a few months ago, I got call from a school music teacher in Downey, California.  She said, “You don’t know me.”   I had gotten calls like that several times before where somebody was adopted and they were looking for their biological parents.  

The conservation went the usual way when she said, “I don’t know who my parents are, but the note they gave to my adopting parents had writing on it; ‘Your mother was a singer and your father was a blossoming dreamer who lived in Dublin, Georgia.  You were born the year your father was a college freshman in Macon.'" That was all the ancient yellowed note said.

Then I tried to remember the kind of September when life was slow and oh, so mellow, when the grass was green and grain was yellow, and when life was so, so tender.

I emailed her my picture and she replied with several of hers.

Kacee at six.

Kacee at 9

Kacee at 12

                                                       Kacee at 18.

                                                     Kacee at 31

I asked her to call me when she got the photograph.   There was a long pause. “Oh, my God,” she screamed!  You're my ...!

        She told me that her name was Kacee. After crying on her pillow for hours, she wrote back, "But, who is my mom?"  I didn't know what she meant.

Then I went to sleep and dreamed the night away hoping that I would have the same yesterday’s dream once more. The answer came to me at the midnight hour. 

I called the lady back in the chapel were she was volunteering and said, “Does the name Karen mean anything to you?” I asked.

The tears flowed.

“I can’t believe this, I forgot to tell you that the note said my birth mother and her brother were some sort of hippy rock and roll singers from Southern California. My adopted mother  cared not at all  for that kind of heathen music.

Then I screamed, “Oh my God!”

At this instant I knew that my midnight dream was not a dream at all.

We recently got together and shared our memories and her mother’s music.  She had heard the voice  before. At the moment she heard her mother sing, she collapsed in overwhelming joy. 

Kacee today.

Me, a few yesterdays ago. 

When I'm telling the world my midnight confession, I confess that I still love Karen “K.C.” Carpenter to this day. 

When I was a young man, I dreamed that Karen Carpenter was standing by a  yellow river kissing me. Mama always told me love was made in Heaven and how fate could steal my love from me. And, I think about that summer night when I loved Karen Carpenter and Karen Carpenter loved me. 

    

    I  really do  have this sweater.  You can see it in my curio cabinet in my office.  Cross my heart and hope to die in 25 years.

    Now, I was born in May, so I am no April fool.  If you believed this tale, you might be one.  I won't tell anyone because many people think that I am somewhat of a weird, foolish dreamer.  

  

    I did love writing this whimsical, dreamlike fable and  I do look forward to many more midnight dreams.

THE PICTURES OF KAREN CARPENTER  AND ME ARE REAL.  THE PHOTOS OF MY IMAGINARY DAUGHTER KACEE ARE NOT REAL AND ARE  THE RESULT OF GOOGLE'S FACE APP, WHICH  DIGITALLY MORPHED FACIAL FEATURES AND HAIR OF KAREN CARPENTER  AND ME TOGETHER.  IF YOU TIME TO DREAM, I SUGGEST YOU DOWNLOAD THE APP TO YOUR CELL PHONE.