But it was only slightly more realistic than searching for the Holy Grail, by which I mean it was utterly ridiculous. On a small ship, sailing to Lima, we were told repeatedly
to keep an eye out for the Blue-footed Booby. Even the name seemed outrageous—but nature assigned no such moniker, humans did. The Blue-footed Booby, we were told, is
often sighted plunging head first into the sea here and, yes, it really does have light blue feet, brighter in youth and a duller blue as the birds age. Nature invented ageism
and, apparently, humans invented preposterous names. Case in point: the woman who, minutes after I delivered her baby girl, announced she would be named Marksalot.
She named her daughter after the fluorescent highlighter on her bed stand. Out over a gunmetal sea, there was not a bird in sight: no pelicans, no gulls, and not a single
Blue-footed Booby. Despite hours of staring through tiny binoculars, we never saw one. We saw only waves. It has been years since that day sailing into Lima,
and I couldn’t explain to you exactly why this memory decided to present itself to me now, except that here, out over the Pacific, not a single bird can be seen. Instead,
we have the Blue Angels thundering out over the Golden Gate practicing for their Fleet Week show tomorrow. The jets don’t really seem that blue, so I have to assume
they are old. And though they stream through the skies, nothing about them seems angelic. And I wonder if there is something angelic about the Blue-footed Booby.
Like angels, they are rare and rarely seen. One must be desperate, I believe, to see one, the way poor Joseph was when an angel of the Lord appeared to him to ensure
he understood his wife was carrying the Son of God. Joseph named the child Jesus, though I am told it was really Yeshua. One of them means rare, means worth more than gold.