Once it meets its snowy destination, it is swallowed by the masses.
On this particular day, this once particular snow flake has met its end on the top wing of a truly unique piece of machinery.
To look at her, you would never know her true past. FAM looks nothing like I remember and that's painful too when you consider how it seared itself into my soul and guided what is now an inseparable part of my life.
Truly, I struggle to call it a part at all. Without this, I am not whole...but a shell.
Before me then, lies a shell.
Someone has painted her in canary yellow. Here and there are slashes of blue and white - almost like barred teeth but seemingly applied without care, rhyme or reason. Her new paint scheme resembles the "dazzle" coats applied to warships during the Great War except, well, yellow.
A rather offensive shade of yellow.
Her nose is tucked into the snow as if she's hiding in embarrassment. Her wheels are crumpled up beneath her lower wing. Metal rods chain her to the frozen earth. Her rudder is awkwardly deflected to the right - where it would be if you were starting the take-off roll.
Squatting on the snowy ground, on broken haunches, her back appears hunched, coiled, fearful.
These are all living qualities that I have applied, some would say unwisely, to a mere airplane. I don't expect too many people to understand.
In the background, an elephant ambles by.
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| The former C-FFAM - now a static diplay at the Granby Zoo. (Photo Courtesy: Martin Ujlaki) |
To the casual eye, it would appear that FAM's intrepid pilot crash-landed in the African dunes - perhaps on a mail run or, as was the fashion in the early days of aviation, a record breaking flight. This pilot has since committed the fatal error of leaving his machine only to be swallowed by the sand. The whole thing is very Saint Exupery-ish - think "The Little Prince" - although I suspect that is rather the point.
FAM is waiting for the summer when the children will return to clamber over her pockmarked skin, recently covered in $15,000 worth of fibreglass, and dream fanciful dreams of aerial adventure.
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| The biplane's new mission. (Photo Courtesy: Alain Maille) |
My dad died one year ago this day - just shy of 8 in the morning. I wasn't with him. Putting aside all the rest, that fact alone will require a lifetime of limitless self-reflection and forays into an endless emotional morass. I lack the stomach to even consider it. One year on, I thought I would feel better.
The fact is, I feel much, much worse.
It is a daily struggle for my family - one that requires, for lack of a better term, balance.
To that point, my dad was born on September 2nd - 9/2...and died on the 9th of February - 2/9.
That's oddly cyclical and balanced for a man who struggled with both.
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| Dad on his 66th and last birthday. (Photo Courtesy: Family Collection) |
So, almost 30 years after lighting in me that passion for flight, it seems just as oddly fitting that his former mount is doing the same for other children.
I've yet to visit FAM. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure that I want to. Perhaps, I'm merely not ready to. When I first discovered her whereabouts, I was excited to visit the Granby Zoo and, who knows, perhaps sit in the cockpit again. Instead, I embarked on this journey which has been both uplifting and crushing - often in the same instant.
I am happy I did this. I am sad that she will never fly again.
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| A future pilot learning the craft. (Photo Courtesy: Alain Maille) |
I am incredibly moved, overjoyed even, that in the hearts and minds of the youngsters who climb into her single seat...she does take flight, every day, to far off distant lands and days long ago lost in the sands of time.
She will, however, remain a lasting monument to my dad and his love of flight.
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| Antonio Francesco Rotondo 2/9/1945 - 9/2/2012 "Blue Skies Forever..." |
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