Transmissions

It's late on a Tuesday evening in May - likely around 8:00pm as I recall scribbling down "1954" as our time up.  We're gliding east along the south shore of the Ottawa River - our usual route with the sun at our back.  The Gatineau Airport is off the left wing, on the opposite shore, and entertaining only a pair of training flights practicing take-offs and landings.

Getting ready to depart Rockcliffe on a May evening.  (Author's Collection)

"Gatineau Radio, good evening.  Smith Miniplane Golf Delta Sierra Alpha with you, one-two-two decimal three - no transponder."
"Delta Sierra Whisky, Gatineau Radio.  Good evening."
It's likely a slip of the tongue as DSW was one of the old Aviation 550 172s based at Gatineau years ago.
"It's Delta Sierra Alpha.  Local flight - eastbound, south shore Ottawa river, one point seven."
"Roger," comes the reply.  "Report clear of the zone to the east."
It's a smooth evening - nary a ripple in the sea aloft - but hazy.  The horizon is undefined, bloated by humidity and tinged a smoky golden color by the low-slung sun.  Orleans crawls backwards underneath our wings.

Rockcliffe on May 24, 2016 - flight number 100 in the Smith. (Author's Collection)

This is my hundredth flight in the Smith.  It feels like that first heart-thumping flight and near disastrous landing at Brampton happened a lifetime ago when, in fact, it's been two years less two weeks.  Time is a funny thing.
I feel safe up here - despite the inherent dangers of flying.  In this cockpit, perhaps more than most, life is beautifully simple.  It's measured in miles per hour, feet per second, gallons per hour... The mechanics of flying are so ridiculously easy that one wonders why more won't take it up.   Then again, perhaps it is a blessing after all.  Having spent time aloft, one grows jealously protective and, while happy to admit guests to this inner sanctum, would prefer fewer permanent residents.              
For me, the sky has always been an escape.  I don't mean that in the sense that I'm running away from anything but rather, life is easier to manage when one has even but a momentary respite.
My father's death hit me harder than anything else I'd faced in my life - before or since.  I don't mean to say that my marriage or the birth of our son was of less impact but I was able to live it emotionally. That wasn't the case with Dad's passing.  Everything that followed happened so quickly and with such cold severity that I could do nothing but flip a switch and function purely on autopilot.   I grieved later and in my own way.  This blog and what I hope it becomes is an extension of that grief.
If someone asks, I'll honestly tell them that I don't like visiting my father's grave.  If pressed as to why, I'll confess that I don't think it holds anything of him, anything of worth at least. It's why I feel closer to him in the air, than I do on the ground.  It's why I insisted on having his Smith engraved on the crypt's plaque.  It's the reason for the airplane I'm sitting in, two thousand feet above the earth.

The engraving of Foxtrot-Alpha-Mike on my dad's plaque.  (Photo Courtesy: Author's Collection)

My dad worked long hours and often arrived home exhausted.  Naps were common after dinner.  As a little boy, I remember watching his chest rise and fall and, for some reason, worrying about what I would do if this breath was his last.  In the same vein, I would kneel on the couch that backed onto the large front window of my childhood home and wait for his car to pull into the driveway.  Sometimes, I would walk out to the end of the driveway and wait for headlights to appear at each end of the street then hurry back inside, hoping those two beams of light would illuminate the house rather than continue past.
I can't explain it and I don't think I've mentioned this to anyone...but I always felt as though my dad was living on borrowed time.
In a way, we all are.  It's an ugly proposition.
"Delta Sierra Alpha, Gatineau Radio," the voice of the flight service specialist crackles in my ears.  It's a welcome interruption.
"You're cleared en route.  Have a good flight."
So we are.  I glance over the canopy lip and see the ferries at Cumberland.
"So long," I reply.
I guide the little ship into a slight right turn to the south-east towards JP's farm.  A few orbits fail to solicit a response so we head further south into our favoured patch of farmer's fields.  Here, I throw the airplane around a bit, just for the fun of it.  After about ten minutes, we turn west again for home.
The sun is beginning to set.  The Ottawa River is a mirror - placid and flat and reflecting a kaleidoscope of colors filtered by the haze choking the horizon.  The suns rays bounce off the surface of the river and, like a skipping stone, set off a series of sparks - dots and dashes.
My dad did his national military service as an army Marconista - a wireless operator for a tank battalion - and he'd taught me some Morse code.  When I was perhaps 7 or 8 years old, he wrote the entire alphabet and numbers on a piece of lined paper and we went over a few letters every weekend after breakfast.

A dying sun.  (Author's collection)

The bursts of flight being thrown up at us by the surface of the river are not unlike those dots and dashes or di(t) and dah, as my dad put it.
I remember some but not nearly enough...
...di-di-di-dit - easy, an H.
...di-dah-dah-dah - J, or a misreading of Y.
...dah-dah - M, or was it dah-dit - N?
Is it gibberish - my trying to find meaning in chaos?  Or is the dying sun sending us a message?  It's fantasy, surely, but an intriguing idea.  At any rate, the flashes occur with the speed and breadth of a meteor shower and, while beautiful, it's impossible to decipher what, if anything, is being sent.

I've had a few dreams about my dad since he passed - but nothing like the waking reverie I'm having now.  I want to believe in an afterlife or, at least, that our loved ones still exist in one form or another. Perhaps this is a sign.  At the very least, it's something to hold on to.
As the sun falls below the horizon, the earth darkens and the sky changes.  The great telegraph key falls silent with a final burst and whatever light remains reflects golden off the underside of the top wings.

Heading home at dusk. (Author's collection)

It was a long winter and while I've made perhaps a dozen flights so far this season, tonight's was my dad's first "visit" of the year.  It was for me alone and it's difficult to describe.  What I saw this evening proves, at least to me, that he isn't in the mausoleum, behind that granite plaque.  He's up here with me, in a single-seat biplane.
Tonight, it's obvious - and I see it as plainly as I can count the ribs in the Smith's wings.  Tonight, I took a few minutes back.

...di-di-di-dah-di-dah...