Perilous Night
To this day, when I watch any sporting event, particularly the one I love most (major league baseball), I catch myself still looking up to the players. Even though they’re, now, at least two decades (this is for Lady B) my junior.
Such a funny thing the mind does…stamping onto young psyches something like hero worship and leaving indelible relief. I can think of so many examples, but chief among them are a photograph of my grandfather from World War II.
I recently renovated the studio and had to temporarily pack away the photos and memorabilia to paint, so by the time this article posts, I’ll hope to have excavated the photograph to which I’m referring and include it here.
It is a photo that, to this day, makes my back stiffen to attention when I look at it. Roland in his leather flight jacket, his hat cocked off to the side and a devil-may-care grin. The color is vintage but not Photoshopped. It’s the real deal because, of course, the photograph is that old.
What I love most about the photo is that he was only nineteen years old when it was taken. Nineteen. He was a Hump pilot, which was the name given by Allied pilots in WWII to the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains. He flew military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek and the units of the United States Army Air Forces based in China.
Nineteen.
But when I look at that photograph, I’m a little kid again and I’m looking at a god.
And then I remember what I consider the most meaningful conversation with him I ever had…
September 11, 2001.
Cute Redhead sat on the couch cradling our five-day old baby girl. I’d just stepped out into the room seeing the second plane do what it did, and stood there unable to absorb the momentum of what my mind could not imagine.
You remember the day.
And I remember the trauma leveled against myself and my failing ability to navigate what had happened, what it meant, and what was coming.
And then Roland was on the phone. And having lost the best of his hearing years ago, was yelling in the way I’d pay anything to hear again. Which never meant he was angry with you, by the way…but which certainly could; it took a certain understanding to understand that he never whispered. He never mumbled. He yelled.
I miss that yell.
“Hi grandpa. I can’t bel—”
“Is this Todd!”
“lol yeah, Roland…it’s Todd. I was saying that I can’t bel—”
“You listen to me boy…”
…and then he paused and spoke courage into me in a way that throttled me and punched a whole into my mettle.
“…we’re going to be fine, boy.”
And I lost it. I did my level best to be the brave private hearing the braver colonel’s Just Let Them Try, but for the first time in my life…I heard him not yell, but talk softly.
And over the miles, over the phone…he set his giant hand on my shoulder and emboldened me. And in the moment, in a flash, I was eight years old and wanted baseball games and days of deep summer and some way, any way, to not know anything about the world.
I’ll never forget.
I wish there was more like him these days. The curtain is closing on The Greatest Generation and it unnerves me because, no matter what we think we know, they know more.
They know that, no matter what, we’re going to be fine.
That’s what I remember.
That’s what I need to keep remembering.
It’s beautiful and moving and heartful. It’s just lovely.
In a world than seems to end, knowing taht others before us saw the same instability, suffered the same frightned and could conquer their own present and their own future, just makes us think that it’s possible, it will not be easy but it is reachable, obtainable…And, beyond facts, fates and destinies, we’re going to be fine. Just fine.
Priceless.